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TRIBUTE 



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EDWARD EVERETT 



BY THE 



New-Enqlanb Mistoiic-tlxcnealocjical Society, 



At Boston, Mass., 



January 17 and February' i, 1S65. 



-o-Oi^J&o- 




BOSTON: 
NEW-ENGLAND HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

M.DCCC.LXV. 



£-34-0 



It is clue to such a character, that, as he is laid in his grave, the varied organi- 
zations with which he was connected through his remarkable career should put 
on record expressions of grateful recognition of the gift of so rare a life, and 
thus tenderly consign him over to the Muse of History to cherish his memory as 
that of a great and good character, who was a blessiug to his country and an 
ornament to his age. — Richard Frothingham, January 17, 1S05. 



riiiNTED by Geo. C. Rand & Avekv, Boston. 



PROCEEDINGS. 



At a special meeting of the Directors of the New-England His- 
toric - Genealogical Society, held at their rooms in Bromfield 
Street, on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 17, 1865, to take notice of the death 
of Hon. Edward Everett, — a member of the Society from the year 
of its organization, — who died in Boston on Sunday morning, Jan. 15, 
1865, William B. Towne was called to the chair, and William Reed 
Deane was appointed Secretary pro tempore. 

John H. Sheppard, the Librarian, introduced the subject by these 
remarks : — 

The sudden death of the Hon. Edward Everett 
has called us together not merely to testify our deep 
sorrow for the loss of a most influential and honored 
member of our Society, but, with other numerous 
institutions, to offer our humble tribute of respect to 
the memory of a very eminent man of our common 
country. A great light has gone down in our politi- 
cal heavens ; a star of the first magnitude, admired 
at home and among foreign nations, whose brilliant 
rays of science and eloquence have adorned this 
Western Hemisphere and made a luminous path, has 
set forever. Our nation has met with an irreparable 
loss, and particularly in these dark days and troublous 
times of an unholy rebellion, when his counsels and 



4 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

voice are so much needed. His death has cast a 
gloom over society through the length and breadth 
of the land. It will be felt in the cabinet, in the na- 
tional and legislative halls, on the battle-field, and 
everywhere ; for his eloquence was everywhere heard, 
as it were, on the wings of the press, speaking with 
the voice of one going about to do good : and in no 
place will his death be more lamented than in a sister 
city, to relieve which the very last hours of his ex- 
ceedingly busy and energetic life were devoted ; yes, 
the tears of Savannah will gush forth at the sad 
news. 

Mr. Everett has left us a striking example that 
old age does not necessarily impair the intellectual 
powers, when they have been vigorously kept in ex- 
ercise. In his seventy-first year, his talents were 
bright and active as ever, and his judgment and im- 
agination retained the full power of his earlier days. 
He was indeed in se ijiso totus, teres atque rotundus : 
there was a wholeness, a polish, and a roundness in 
his character, wherein all the rough edges and sharp 
angles so often met with, even among distinguished 
men, were softened into a pleasing smoothness. On 
this melancholy occasion we can only present a few 
resolutions, echoing the words of universal sorrow; 
and though they cannot add to the fame of the 
illustrious dead, yet they may evince our grief and 
sympathy. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 5 

Mr. Sheppard then offered the following resolutions: — 

Resolved, That, in the death of Hon. Edward Ev- 
erett, this Society, of which he was a Resident Mem- 
ber for nineteen years, deplores a great loss. 

Resolved, That, in his death, literature and science 
are called to mourn the departure of a very distin- 
guished scholar and accomplished writer, whose pu- 
rity and elegance of taste, richness of imagination, 
affluence of language, and flowing, fascinating style, 
would, without any other mark of distinction or 
celebrity, have made him an honor and an ornament 
to our country. 

Resolved, That, in his death, the voice of a most 
eloquent man is silent, — a voice which left no supe- 
rior, if indeed it did an equal, in this land ; and which 
was ever exerted in the cause of all that is good or 
excellent pertaining to a nation's welfare. 

Resolved, That, in the death of this statesman and 
patriot, the whole nation has reason to weep and la- 
ment ; for his exalted love of the Union gave to his 
voice and counsels a peculiar importance in the 
present great struggle to preserve our nationality 
from destruction. 

Resolved, That, in his death, we deplore the loss 
of a citizen of most exemplary virtues, indefatigable 
industry, and faithful adherence to those noble prin- 
ciples of justice and honor, from the prevalence only 
of which a nation can become great and glorious. 



6 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

Resolved, That we respectfully tender our sympa- 
thies to the bereaved family. 

Resolved, That, in testimony of our veneration of 
the memory of the deceased, we will attend his fu- 
neral on Thursday next ; and also that a copy of 
these resolutions be presented to his family. 

After remarks by Samuel G. Drake, Rev. Elias Nason, John H. 
Sheppahd, Frederic Kidder, John Ward Dean, William B. 
Trask, William Reed Deane, and the presiding officer, the resolu- 
tions were unanimously adopted. 

The Committee on Papers to be read before the Society, learning soon 
after the death of Mr. Everett that the President, Winslow Lewis, M.D., 
Rev. Elias Nason of Exeter, New Hampshire, and Rev. Frederick W. 
Holland of Cambridge, were each prepared with remarks relating to the 
memory of their late distinguished associate, omitted to make their usual 
preparation for the next monthly meeting, which was to take place on 
Wednesday, Feb. 1 ; and the exercises on that occasion consisted of the 
following spontaneous tributes to the memory of him for whom the nation 
mourns. 



ADDRESS. 



By the President, Winslow Lewis, M. I). 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen, — 

Although much has been most touchingly, justly, 
and eloquently uttered, in many other places, in ref- 
erence to the great man who has recently been 
called away so suddenly from us in the full frui- 
tion of his fame and in the very zenith of his useful- 
ness, and although it naturally falls to the office of 
our able historiographer to recapitulate to you the 
leading facts and dates of his eventful life, still, nei- 
ther would you think or I feel it to be right or be- 
coming in me, sitting by your favor in this chair, to 
pass over altogether in silence an occurrence of such 
great and painful interest as the death of Edward 
Everett ; to whose loss and memory, distinguished as 
he was pre-eminently as a classical scholar, I feel that 
the lines of Horace on the death of Quintilius are 
peculiarly, pointedly, and most touchingly appropri- 
ate : — 

" Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus 
Taui cari capitis V . . . 
Ergo Quintilium perpetuus sopor 
Urguet ? Cui Pudor, et Justitiae soror 
Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas 
Quando ulluni inveniet parem? 
Multis i/le bonis flebilis occidit .' " 



10 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

Yes, indeed " he has died lamented, and to be 
lamented, by all good men." 

My contemporary, my colleague on the Board 
of Overseers of that University in which he once 
taught with so much scholarly ability, and over 
which he afterwards presided with so much dignity, 
grace, and wisdom, and which, from first to last, re- 
tained so deep and strong a hold upon his interest 
and affections, it were alike unnatural and impossi- 
ble that his name and memory should fail to draw 
from my heart and lips some tribute, however faintly 
and imperfectly expressed, of honor to his worth, of 
admiration for his talents, and grief for his loss. A 
far greater orator than I has recently, with a very 
felicitous application of the deceased's own words, 
uttered in regard to Daniel Webster, most grace- 
fully and powerfully expressed the impossibility of 
any survivor's voice doing justice to the memory of 
the great one gone from us. " There is but one voice 
that ever fell upon my ear which could do justice to 
such an occasion ; and that voice, alas ! we shall hear 
no more forever ! " As now mourning Memory casts 
her retrospective glance over the career of our de- 
parted friend and fellow-citizen, she reads a record 
which is truly marvellous and absolutely startling by 
the fulness and variety of loftiest aims accomplished, 
and brightest and proudest of laurels fairly and 
nobly won, in so many of the highest and most dif- 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. ] 1 

ricult departments of patriotic labor, philanthropic 
zeal, and intellectual culture. 

It is seldom that Providence assigns to even its 
most favored sons the power of attaining to pre- 
eminent distinction in more than one sphere of 
human life and labor ; and thus our own and other 
nations have rightly and readily honored while liv- 
ing, and mourned when dead, such of their great men 
as have reflected renown and glory upon themselves 
and their birth-land in each respective path of war 
or statesmanship, learning or literature, or of elo- 
quence displayed in the pulpit, the halls of legisla- 
tion, or the courts of law. 

Edward Everett, endowed with powers alike in 
versatility and vastness denied to the great majority 
of earth's great men, was not only a statesman, 
scholar, writer, educator, and orator, — orator alike 
in Congress, on the platform, and in the pulpit, — 
but by the confession of all, friends and foes, fellow- 
citizens or foreigners, he held undeniably a place of 
the very highest rank in each and all of these illus- 
trious departments of thought and labor and re- 
nown. 

Well indeed, then, may America, in public and 
private ; in the legislative chambers, where his wise 
counsels and eloquent voice were so often and so 
ably exerted for his country's benefit ; in the humble 
dwellings throughout all the broad borders of our 



12 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

land, where his name will ever be gratefully asso- 
ciated with the progress and liberty which he did 
and said so. much to promote and to render perma- 
nent; and especially in every society devoted, like 
our own, to the pursuit and cultivation of any of 
those liberal arts and studies of which he was him- 
self at once the most zealous promoter and brightest 
exemplar, — well, I say, may America, in these and 
every other phase and department of her public and 
private life, venerate his memory and mourn his loss. 

We have been ere now severely criticised as a 
nation, by foreigners, for an exaggeration of praise 
towards our country's great men. There may have 
been instances in which that criticism was more or 
less deserved ; but assuredly it can have no shadow 
of application here : and when true, transcendent 
ability has established its claims before the nation 
and the world, to fail to do it full, generous, out^ 
spoken honor, would be alike discreditable to our- 
selves, and false to some of the noblest and purest 
feelings of the human heart, — feelings which an 
illustrious English writer of the present day has de- 
scribed with eloquent force, and in terms peculiarly 
apposite to the present occasion : — 

" There is a charm about great superiority of intel- 
lect, that winds into deep affections, which a much 
more constant and even amiability of manners in 
lesser men often fails to reach. Genius makes many 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 13 

enemies; but it makes sure friends, — friends who for- 
give much, who endure long, who exact little : they 
partake of the character of disciples as friends. 
There lingers about the human heart a strong incli- 
nation to look upward, to revere. In this inclination 
lies the source of religion, of loyalty, and also of the 
worship and immortality which are rendered so free- 
ly to the great of old. And in truth it is a divine 
pleasure. Admiration seems, in some measure, to 
appropriate to ourselves the qualities it so honors in 
others. We wed, we root ourselves to, the natures we 
so love to contemplate, until their being becomes, as 
it were, a part of our own. Thus, when some great 
man who has engrossed our thoughts, our conjec- 
tures, our homage, dies, a gap seems suddenly left 
in the world ; a wheel in the mechanism of our own 
being seems abruptly stilled ; a portion of ourselves, 
and not our worst portion, (for how many pure, high, 
generous sentiments it contains !) dies with him. 
Yes : it is this love, so rare, so exalted, so denied to 
all ordinary men, which is the especial privilege of 
greatness, whether that greatness be shown in wis- 
dom, in enterprise, in virtue, or even, till the world 
learns better, in the more daring and lofty order of 
crime. A Socrates may claim it to-day, a Napoleon 
to-morrow ; and even a brigand chief, illustrious in the 
circle in which he lives, may call it forth no less pow- 
erfully than the generous failings of a Byron, or the 



14 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

sublime excellence of the greater Milton."* If these 
remarks be true, — and true we feel them to be, not- 
withstanding what at first appears a paradox at their 
close, — well may we feel and express the love and 
homage and admiration cherished almost involunta- 
rily in our hearts for the memory of a man so truly, 
nobly, pre-eminently great as was Edward Everett. 
Well may we feel, now that he has gone from us for- 
ever, that " a gap seems suddenly left in the world, 
a wheel in the mechanism of our own being seems 
abruptly stilled, and that a portion of ourselves 
has died with him." 

Our illustrious fellow-citizen has been, with pecu- 
liar propriety and justice, styled the American Cicero. 
In one of the most eloquent speeches of the Roman 
orator, you will remember, a prophetic wish was 
uttered, which was realized to a very full extent in 
his own case, as it has been at least as richly deserved 
by the memory of Edward Everett's words and 
works : — 

" Quibus pro tantis rebus, Quirites, nullum ego a 
vobis prsemium virtutis, nullum monumentum laudis 
postulabo, prseterquam hujus diei memoriam sempiter- 
nam. In animis ego vestris omnes triumphos meos, 
omnia ornamenta honoris, monumenta glorias, laudis 
insignia, condi et collocari volo. Nihil me mutum 
potest delectare, nihil taciturn, nihil denique ejusmodi, 

* Sir E. Buhver Lytton : " Eugene Aram." 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 15 

quod etiam minus digni assequi possint, Memoria 
vestra, Quirites, nostra res alentur, sermonibus cres- 
cent, literarum monumentis inveterascent et corro- 
borabuntur." 

" And for these services, fellow-citizens ! great as 
they may be, I ask of you no reward of merit, no 
badge of distinction, no monument of my glory, 
except the enduring recollection of this day. It is 
in your hearts that I desire all my triumphs, all my 
decorations of dignity, the monuments of my glory, 
the bright badges of my renown, to be stored and 
treasured up. Nothing dumb and voiceless can de- 
light me, nothing silent ; nothing, in short, of such 
a kind and character as may ever be attained by 
men less meritorious. My name and deeds, fellow- 
citizens, shall be cherished in your memory, shall 
gain fresh growth in your discourses, and shall be- 
come deeply and lastingly engraven on the monu- 
ments of your literature." 

Yes, while the literature of America survives and 
flourishes, the name and fame of Edward Everett 
" shall be deeply and lastingly engraven on its mon- 
uments;" and, while gratitude and admiration for all 
that is great and good shall animate and inspire the 
hearts of our children's children, so long " shall his 
deeds and name be cherished in their memory." 

And while I have thus adopted, in regard rather 
to his fame and public services, the words of his re- 



16 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

nowned Roman prototype and exemplar, so am I led 
almost involuntarily to give expression to the more 
tender and personal feelings of sorrow awakened in 
all our hearts by his loss, in the words, slightly 
varied, of Ireland's national poet : — 

" It is not the tear at this moment shed, 

When the cold turf has just been laid o'er him. 
That can tell how beloved was the friend that is dead, 

Or how deep in our hearts we deplore him. 
'Tis the tear through many a long day wept, 

Through a life by his loss all shaded ; 
'Tis the sad remembrance, fondly kept 

When all lighter griefs have faded. 
Yes, thus shall we mourn ; and his memory's light, 

While it shines through our hearts, will improve them : 
For worth shall look fairer, and truth more bright, 

When we think how he lived but to love them. 
And as buried saints have given perfume 

To shrines where they've been lying, 
So our hearts shall borrow a sweetening bloom 

From the odor he left there in dying." 

The highest and most sterling mark of respect that 
we can pay to the memory of any great man, is to 
educe, follow, and bring prominently forward, the 
salutary lessons taught by his example. If there be 
any foundation for the belief, entertained by many 
wise and good men, that the spirits of the loved and 
lost are at times permitted to revisit and hover 
around the places and persons that were most dear 
to them in life, then can we readily imagine that no 



IN MEMOEY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 17 

statue of stone, or bust of bronze, or tiny thing else 
" dumb and silent," would afford such satisfaction to 
the spirit of Edward Everett as this carrying on and 
forward, by holding up his example for imitation, 
the great work of good to his country and his kind 
to which his life in the flesh was all and ever so nobly 
devoted. The erection of statues of marble or of 
metal may be a graceful and becoming compliance 
with a custom rendered venerable by antiquity; and, 
however unneeded by us or by our children, it may 
be well that the visitor from far-distant lands, at- 
tracted by the view of the statue, shall be led to 
inquire more minutely into the life-history of the 
man. But, in regard to all such monuments, the 
thought and utterance of his spirit would doubtless 
be, — for we all know what delight he took in the 
Latin poets, — 

" Exegi monumentum ace perennius, 
Regalique situ pyramidum altius : 
Quod non imber edax, non aqurio impoteus. 
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
Annorum series et fuga temporum. 
Non omnis moriar ! multaque pars mei 
Vitabit Libitinam ! " 

For the great talents that he possessed, more es- 
pecially his wonderful powers of memory, Edward 
Everett was indebted, of course, altogether to the 
endowment of Nature ; or in better, though more 



18 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

old-fashioned language, to the gracious gift of God. 
But the means by which he developed such talents, 
and made them serviceable to the important objects 
of his life, was the work of the man ; and it is from 
this we may best derive example and instruction. 
And it is at once apparent, that unwearied industry, 
and inflexible, unflinching perseverance, combined 
with and stimulated by a lofty ambition, were the 
leading characteristics of his life and career from boy- 
hood to the grave. Here alone we have a life-lesson, 
especially as afforded to us in the life of such a man, 
of incalculable value. " Surely," many a votary, and 
victim of indolence and ease, may say, " it was not 
necessary for a man of such splendid natural endow- 
ments as Everett to work hard, to be diligent and 
persevering." I answer, Here in his life we have the 
refutation of all such fallacies. He accomplished 
great things, wonderful things; great and well-won 
fame for himself; great, lasting good for his country, 
for the community in which he lived, and for the 
common cause of civilization, progress, and liberty ; 
and he accomplished all this, not by genius or tal- 
ent alone, or even in chief part, but by constantly 
bringing, to the service and support of these, steady, 
systematic labor, and determined perseverance in the 
acquisition of learning and sound knowledge : so that 
in his life was realized, in a remarkable manner, that 
happy union of learning, diligence, and natural ability, 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 19 

so eloquently expressed by the Roman orator : " Atque 
idem ego hoc contendo quum ad naturam eximiam 
et illustrem accesserit ratio quaedam conformatioque 
doctrime, turn illud nescio quid praeclarum ac sin- 
gulare solere existere." — "And I further maintain, 
that when to excellent and admirable natural abilities 
and disposition there are added a certain systematic 
training and thorough acquisition, then a certain 
glorious and wonderful perfection of character is wont 
to arise." 

Edward Everett's devotion to, and constant culti- 
vation of, literature and learning, has, I believe, 
exercised, and will yet in even a greater degree 
exercise, a most beneficial influence upon our system 
of education and self-culture, and upon the intel- 
lectual character of our country. His life and mem- 
ory will ever stand as conspicuous monumental wit- 
nesses to the fact, that not only is the cultivation of 
sound classical learning, and of what we term the 
"higher scholarship," compatible with the full and 
efficient performance of the practical duties of an 
American citizen in the highest and most responsible 
positions, but that in an eminent degree it enhances 
and enlarges the abilities for their performance, and 
also gives to their fulfilment a lustre of grace and 
dignity that can be derived from no other source. It 
is not to be denied, that hitherto we have not, as a 
people, been sufficiently sensible of the great value 



20 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

and importance of this higher scholarship and classi- 
cal cultivation. The circumstances of the country 
have naturally given to the national mind a bias in 
favor of the useful, the practical, the money-making, 
in education as in all else; and, consequently, the 
number of men, who, even at the present day, acquire 
in early life, and continue to cultivate and develop 
through maturer age, this higher scholarship, is com- 
paratively few. The example of Edward Everett 
will, I believe and hope, exercise so powerful and sal- 
utary an influence upon the minds alike of educators 
and educated, as speedily to remove this blot upon 
our national escutcheon, and raise American schol- 
arship to a level with that of England and Germany 
and France. Probably no better defence of his devo- 
tion to such refining studies could have been made 
by our lamented statesman-scholar than that uttered 
by his great Roman prototype, whose eloquent words 
I will freely translate. I am sure you will appreciate 
their remarkable appropriateness : " Do you think it 
possible we could find a supply for our daily speeches, 
when discussing such a variety of matters, unless we 
were to cultivate our minds by the study of litera- 
ture ? or that our minds could bear being kept so 
constantly on the stretch, if we did not relax them 
by that same study ? But I confess that / am devot- 
ed to these studies. Let others be ashamed of them 
if they have buried themselves in books, without being 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 21 

able to produce any thing out of them for the com- 
mon advantage, or any thing which may bear the 
eyes of men and of the light. But why need / be 
ashamed, who for many years have lived in such a 
manner as never to suffer the love of repose to with- 
draw me from the claims of others, or fondness for 
pleasure to distract, or even sleep to delay, my atten- 
tion to their call ? Who can, then, reproach me, or 
who have any just reason to be offended with me, if 
I take to myself for the cultivation of these liberal 
studies the same time which some- take for attending 
to their own private interests, or for celebrating days 
of festivals and games or other pleasures, or even for 
the refreshment and rest of body and mind, or which 
others devote to unseasonable banquets, or playing 
at dice or pila ? And surely this ought to be freely 
allowed to me, because by these liberal studies my 
power as an orator is increased and improved, as 
are also those other families, which, to whatever extent 
I may possess them, have never been denied to the 
service of my friends and my country, when in need 
of them. And if this power of mine may seem to be 
but small, still I am well aware from what source I 
derive those principles that are of the highest value. 
For if I had not convinced myself from early youth 
upwards, both by the precepts of many teachers and 
by constant and close receding, that there is nothing in 
life worthy of being earnestly desired except glory and 



22 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

true honor, and that, in the pursuit of these, all suffer- 
ings of the body, all dangers of death and of banish- 
ment, ought to be deemed but of secondary conse- 
quence, I should never have been led to expose 
myself, for the sake of your safety, to so many and 
such dangerous attacks of unprincipled men. But 
all books are full of such precepts ; and all the wise 
maxims of philosophers, and all the learning of anti- 
quity, teem with precedents that teach the same great 
lesson : all which lessons, however, would remain 
buried in darkness, if the light of learning and lite- 
rature were not shed upon them. How many exam- 
ples of the world's best and bravest men, carefully 
educed and elaborated, both Greek and Roman orators 
have bequeathed to us, not alone for our inspection 
and admiration, but also for our adoption and imi- 
tation ! And I, for my part, ever keeping these con- 
stantly before my eyes as examples and guides for my 
own public conduct, have steadily striven to mould my 
own mind and measures by continually thinking on 
the lives of those excellent men. And even were no 
such great practical advantage to be derived there- 
from, and only pleasure and relaxation sought from 
these learned studies, still I believe you would deem 
it to be a most rational and refining occupation of 
the mind. For other pursuits are not adapted to 
every time, nor to every place or age ; but these 
studies are alike the fostering food of youth, the 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 23 

delight of old age, the ornament of prosperity, the 
refuge and comfort of adversity ; a delight at home, 
and no hinderance abroad : they are, in fine, bur best 
and most beloved companions in the watches of the 
night, in the wanderings of travel, and amid the calm 
and retirement of the country." 

Now, surely, my friends, you will agree with me 
in the opinion, that the passages which I have thus 
feebly, yet, to the best of my power, faithfully ren- 
dered from Cicero's oration in defence of Archias, 
might with at least equal appropriateness and truth 
have been uttered by Edward Everett. 

To his sublime and sanctified spirit we may rightly 
and reverently exclaim, — 

" Mutato nomine de te 
Fabula narratur ! " 

Of the value, in a national point of view, of that 
higher learning and classical cultivation of which 
Edward Everett was so powerful an advocate and so 
prominent an example, only a low and depreciatory 
idea is, I fear, as yet entertained by the majority even 
of our wealthy and well-informed New-England peo- 
ple. A " certain knowledge of Latin," to quote a very 
common expression in society, is indeed considered 
necessary to the education of our youth of both 
sexes, more especially as an auxiliary to the study of 
modern languages; but the idea too generally preva- 



24 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

lent is, that it is almost a waste of time to pursue any 
such study beyond this low and limited point. " Of 
what practical use will Latin or Greek be to my son 
in life ? " is not only the thought, but the openly 
avowed opinion, of many a man of general intelli- 
gence and good position in society. A little reflection 
upon all the bearings of the subject, and upon Ed- 
ward Everett's life, would, I think, tend to alter and 
correct so erroneous an idea. The duties and claims 
of an arduous profession have, I feel painfully con- 
scious, too constantly engrossed my thoughts and 
time to admit of my cultivating or maturing, to the 
extent of my desires, a taste for such studies; but 
I am none the less deeply impressed with a sense 
of their great intrinsic value and importance, not 
only to the mental refinement, self-education, and 
discipline of the individual, but also to the welfare, 
stability, and reputation of our country. Taking at 
first only a very limited and narrow view, it is unde- 
niable that the study of the philosophically composed 
lang-uaffes of Greece and Rome constitutes one of 
the most effective means of training and developing 
the human intellect. Our own language, moreover, 
is to so great an extent, directly or indirectly, de- 
pendent on, and derived from, those languages, that 
no man can possibly be an enlightened, intelligent 
English scholar, capable himself of appreciating and 
enjoying the full force and meaning of a vast niira- 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 25 

ber of English words, and the grandeur and beauty 
of the works of our best English writers, without a 
sound and accurate knowledge of the Greek and 
Latin classics. But it is in a higher and more ex- 
tended point of view that I consider we may and 
ought to derive an important lesson in this respect 
from the life of Edward Everett ; and as I would 
never presume to utter my own less influential words 
on so important a topic, when I am enabled to cite 
the opinion of others, who, by their acknowledged 
eminence as scholars and philosophers, have estab- 
lished their claim to be listened to with attention 
and respect, I will cite some remarks of a distin- 
guished American scholar and thinker, whose senti- 
ments on this subject not only tally very closely 
with my own, but seem to me worthy of the most 
weighty consideration. I allude to the Rev. Dr. 
Henry of New York, in whose eloquent address, de- 
livered nearly thirty years ago, before the Phi Sigma 
Nu Society of the University of Vermont, occur the 
following bold, thoughtful, and as I think, in the 
main, truthful remarks : — 

"We have among us no learned order of men. 
I use the expression for its convenient brevity. We 
have a most respectable body of educated men, some 
of them engaged in the applications of science to the 
arts of life, but most of them exercising the different 
public professions. Whether or not they are all ade- 



26 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

quately appreciated and rewarded, still we have such 
a class, employed in working with, combining, and 
applying, in explaining, communicating, and diffusing, 
the knowledge already possessed. But, in addition to 
these, we want an order of men devoted to original 
inquiry and production ; who, without reference to 
the more palpable uses of knowledge, shall pursue 
truth for its own sake. We need a class of men 
whose lives and powers shall be exclusively given to 
exploring the higher spheres of truth and beauty, in- 
creasing the amount and extending the domain of 
science. Such an order of men is a component part 
of every sound and perfect body politic. A learned 
order is, moreover, one of the conservative powers of 
a nation, necessary in order to check the undue pre- 
dominance of the more gross and material elements. 
In this country, it is peculiarly necessary to counter- 
act the overgrowth and dangerous tendencies of the 
commercial and political spirit. The overgrowth of 
these influences in other countries is checked not 
only by venerable institutions both of religion and 
learning, but also by ancient dignities, more imposing 
forms of government, and various other causes, which 
have no place in this country. The only counteract- 
ing influences that can be brought to bear in this 
country against the undue love of wealth and poli- 
tics are religion and letters ; and religion, left as it 
is to take care of itself, will be entirely inadequate. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 27 

unless the intellectual spirit of the nation be elevated 
by high and pure letters." 

Farther on, after dilating on the vulgarizing inrlu- 
ence of mere riches, sought after as an ultimate 
object and end, he proceeds thus : — 

"Such must always be the tendency of things, 
where the commercial spirit requires an undue pre- 
dominance ; where the excessive and exclusive re- 
spect for money is not repressed by appropriate 
counter-checks. In some countries, these checks to 
the overgrowth of the commercial spirit are sought 
for in venerable institutions of religion and let- 
ters ; in habits of respect for established rank ; and, 
above all, by throwing a considerable portion of 
the property into such a train of transmission, as 
that it becomes the appendage and ornament of 
something that appeals to the higher sentiments, — 
something that is held in greater respect than mere 
riches, and with the possession of which are con- 
nected high and dignified trusts, a high education, 
and the culture and habit of lofty and generous sen- 
timents. This is unquestionably the idea originally 
lying at the ground of the English aristocracy, in 
the theory of the English Constitution. Hence in- 
alienable estates, belonging not to the man, but to 
the dignity of fulfilling its proper trusts, and of up- 
holding those high interests of the country, of which 
the possessor of the dignity is but the representa- 



28 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

tive ; and where habits of education, from generation 
to generation, are designed to teach and impress the 
value of many other things above mere wealth, and 
to connect with the possession and use of riches hon- 
orable sentiments, liberal culture, and the disposi- 
tion to respect and promote the cultivation of high 
science and letters, and all the more spiritual ele- 
ments of social well-being. And, strong as are our 
prejudices in this country, it may, at least, be ques- 
tioned, whether a fair estimate of the evils on both 
sides would not show that such an aristocracy is in 
some respects preferable to that which otherwise is 
too likely to predominate, — the aristocracy of new 
riches, where the elements of society are in perpet- 
ual fluctuation ; where the coarse pretensions of 
lucky speculators, and the vulgar struggles of all to 
' get up,' leave little room for the feelings of repose 
and respect." 

In citing these remarks of Dr. Henry, I, of course, 
would not be understood to countenance or advocate 
the introduction, into this country of ours, of the Old- 
World system of entail property and an hereditary 
nobility ; nor did the writer, I believe, contemplate 
any such idea : but, divesting his observations of the 
somewhat exaggerated fervor of the orator, we shall 
find that they contain a very solid framework of truth. 
But I come now to that portion of his address which 
has a more direct weight and bearing on the subject 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 29 

before us, and in which, I am sure, you will see no 
need for any dissent or disappointment. 

After commenting at considerable length on the 
evils inevitably connected with our democratic form 
of government, as are others, of even a worse and 
weightier character, with monarchical and aristo- 
cratic governments, he thus proceeds : — 

"In a country like ours, then, where the demo- 
cratic and commercial elements are so strong and 
intense, it cannot be expected that Religion will 
exert an adequate conservative influence, unless the 
intellectual tone of the people can be exalted. It is 
the office of Religion to diminish, by her views of 
eternal things, a too intense and absorbing devotion 
to the gross and material objects of life ; but she will 
battle it unequally, unless she is aided by causes that 
shall excite and cherish a taste and respect for the 
higher and more intellectual objects and enjoyments 
of the present life. Let us, then, turn to Letters as 
the other conservative element of the State, and the 
necessary complement of the former. In this aspect 
of our country, we find, in some parts, public schools, 
a press teeming with popular works, and a body of 
teachers and writers actively engaged in communi- 
cating and diffusing existing knowledge. I will not 
stop to dwell at length on certain defects in all this. 
It might be shown how the system of education es- 
tablished among us, tends, in some important respects, 



30 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

not so much to quicken intellectual power, and to 
form decided intellectual tastes, as to furnish the 
modicum of knowledge necessary to enable our youth 
to rush upon the arena of life, and play their part in 
the great struggle for wealth or office. It might be 
shown how the continued multiplication of works like 
most of our popular productions tends to create a 
vague and superficial knowledge, which serves rather 
as a substitute for thinking, than to invigorate the 
powers of thought; and how the mind even of the 
commonest reader gets more good from grappling 
with one master-mind, and, by patient, strenuous 
self-exertion, fathoming the depth of one master- 
work, than by skimming over forty volumes of ' fa- 
miliar elements,' and similar fourth-rate productions 
that are continually coining forth. I might point 
out some indications of a morbid taste in the pres- 
ent reading-public, which require a higher tone of 
literature to correct them. But let whatever there 
is of letters among us be accepted as good, in com- 
parison with having nothing of the kind ; or, even 
some exceptions being made, with having less of it : 
for it tends to the diffusion of knowledge, — a thing 
essential to the welfare of the country, so it be sound 
and wholesome knowledge. Still it is obvious to 
remark, that the diffusion of knowledge is not its 
advancement. Carrying the streams all over the 
land is not keeping the fountains fresh and full. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 31 

The teachers, those engaged in simplifying and com- 
municating existing knowledge, can have but little 
time for increasing the amount. They can have but 
little time, even if they have the intellectual power, 
to explore the fountain-heads, to enlarge them, to 
open new and fresh springs. But this is needed, 
otherwise the streams are likely to get dry and stale. 
We need, then, an order of men of lofty intellectual 
endowment, of original creative power, devoted to 
the highest departments of truth, beauty, and let- 
ters ; an intellectual high priesthood, standing within 
the inner veil of the Temple of Faith, reverently 
watching before the Holy of Holies for its divine 
revelations, and giving them out to the lower minis- 
ters of the altar; thus teaching the teachers, enlar- 
ging their intellectual treasures, exalting their intel- 
lectual spirit, and, through them, instructing and ele- 
vating the whole body of the people. This lofty 
style of letters, as we have said, is good in itself. It 
is good as a component part of the common weal. 
It is good too, it is indispensably necessary, as a 
counteracting power to the predominant evils that 
have been displayed." 

Of such an order of men, devoted to the highest 
departments of letters, and yet not wanting in the 
performance of a citizen's duty, on all great and 
necessary occasions, to their country and their kind, 
Edward Everett was pre-eminently a representative 



32 N". E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGTCAL SOCIETY. 

and exemplar ; and his life-teaching, during the half- 
century that elapsed between the day when he en-' 
tered on his duties as professor of Greek at Harvard, 
and that on which, the honored and hallowed object 
of his country's grief, he entered his last narrow 
earthly home at Auburn, will have done more to im- 
press upon America the value and dignity of learning 
and intellectual cultivation than all that the most 
wise and thoughtful of philosophers could write, or 
the most eloquent of orators could utter and enforce. 
One other point of this great man's life-example I 
must briefly dwell upon, though many of almost 
equal importance must be passed over by me on this 
occasion. I need scarcely say, I refer to the thor- 
oughness and earnestness with which he devoted 
himself to whatever he took in hand. There was 
nothing superficial or lukewarm about him. What he 
did, he did loith all his might. Whether as universi- 
ty professor, or president; as editor, or writer; as Gov- 
ernor of the Commonwealth at home, or Minister of 
America abroad; as Secretary of State, or as Senator; 
as scholar, or as orator, — he spared no time, thought, 
labor, to qualify himself thoroughly for what he un- 
dertook to do ; and the result was an accurateness of 
knowledge, and completeness of work, that few ever 
equalled, none excelled. I know no more valuable 
lesson to be derived from the life and example of 
any man than this of thoroughness and earnestness 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 33 



in the performance of duty. In this respect, and in 
his strong energy and resolute perseverance, Edward 
Everett was a remarkable illustration of those quali- 
ties that have won for the American Anglo-Saxon 
race its proud pre-eminence among the families of 
earth. 

" Indomitable merit 

Of the Anglo-Saxon mind, 
That makes a man inherit 

The glories of his kind ; 
That scatters all around him, 

Until he stands sublime, 
With nothing to confound him, 

The conqueror of Time ! 
O mighty perseverance ! 

O courage stern and stout ! 
That wills and works a clearance 

Of every rabble rout ; 
That cannot brook denial, 

And scarce allows delay, 
But wins from every trial 

More strength for every day ! " 

And now, friends and brethren of our Society, time 
warns me that I must bring my remarks to a close, 
and leave the fuller and more elaborate discussion of 
a subject, to which my poor powers are all too inade- 
quate, to those orators and more gifted writers who 
are better qualified to grasp its grandeur, and to dis- 
tinguish and discern its minuter and more hidden 
points of beauty and of power. 

Assuredly no grander subject is likely to be offered 



34 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

to the poet, the painter, the writer, or the orator, for 
many a long year to come, than the life, career, and 
character of Edward Everett. 

He is gone from us forever : but his " works do 
verily live after him ; " and his memory will remain to 
us and posterity an honored and a sacred heirloom, — 
a true xrrj,«« £g aei, an everlasting possession. His 
spirit hath gone to God, who gave it; and his earthly 
part rests peacefully " in Auburn's quiet shade," in 
accordance with the wish so touchingly expressed in 
these lines of a poem from his own pen, entitled 
" Stanzas on Santa Croce," which was embodied in an 
English author's work on Italy in 1842 : — 

" Hosts yet unnamed, the obscure, the known, I leave : 
What throngs would rise, could each his marble heave ! 
But we, who muse above the famous dead, 
Shall soon be silent as the dust we tread. 
Yet not for me, when I shall fall asleep, 
Shall Santa Croce's lamps their vigils keep ; 
Pqr o'er the sea, in Auburn's quiet shade, 
With those I loved and love, my couch be made ; 
Spring's pendent branches o'er the hillock wave, 
And morning's dewdrops sparkle on my grave , 
AVliile heaven's great arch shall rise above my bed, 
When Santa Croce crumbles o'er its dead : 
Unknown to erring or to suffering fame, 
So I may leave a pure though humble name." 

His wish has been, in most part, fulfilled. He 
sleeps calmly in " Auburn's quiet shade with those he 
loved ; " and he has left a name unsullied, bright, and 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 35 



pure, but not indeed "humble;" rather "highest 
among the high," — a name that shall, through this 
and after-ages, beam as a bright and steady beacon- 
light across the surging tides of life's stormy ocean, 
and cheer and guide many a struggling, toiling, as- 
piring son of America to the haven of honor and 
renown : — 

" A name and lame above the blight 
Of earthly breath, — 
Beautiful, beautiful and bright, 
In life and death ! " 



ADDRESS. 



Br Kev. Elias Xason, A. M., of Exeter, X. II. 



ADDRESS. 



Mr. President, Gentlemen, — 

I should not presume, after the eloquent eulogies 
so recently pronounced over the remains of an illus- 
trious member of this Society, and especially after 
the excellent commemorative address to which we 
have just now listened, to attempt the presentation 
of any of my own studies of the life of such an exalt- 
ed prince of literature, had I not heretofore experi- 
enced some proof of your indulgence, and had not 
the name of Edward Everett in itself a spell of potent 
energy to summon forth associations far above the 
speaker's thoughts, and shed a lustre even upon the 
humblest words recalling him to memory. 

For to what department of learning or of liberal 
culture can I turn, to what kind of scholarship can I 
allude, to what form of eloquence can I advert, to 
what model of classic dignity, of consistent statesman- 
ship, or of generous humanity, can I point, in which 
the very name of Everett does not antedate my 
tardy tongue, and speak itself to you most eloquently 
on my behalf ? But it were quite impossible in a brief 
address to analyze completely the character and por- 



40 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

tray the life of a man of such "regal power of 
intellect," such versatility of talent, such vast erudi- 
tion, such a marvellous range of accomplishment; 
since there is scarcely any archive of history, or cabi- 
net of art, or tribune of oratory, or hall of legislation, 
which he did not enter as a master : and the bril- 
liancy of his intellectual powers and possessions was 
equalled only by the spotless purity and the benig- 
nant splendor of his private life. 

Setting aside his political and legislative career, I 
shall attempt only to present to you some details of 
his academic and literary history, and thus endeavor 
to unfold to some extent the " hiding of his power." 

He was the third son of the Rev. Oliver and Lucy 
Hill Everett, who was of the fifth generation from 
Mr. Richard Everett, one of the original founders of 
Dedham; and was born on the eleventh day of April, 
1794, in the venerable gable-roofed mansion now oc- 
cupied by John Richardson, Esq., and standing, with 
six large sycamore-trees in front, at what is called 
the " Five Corners," in the northern part of Dor- 
chester. He was baptized two days afterwards by 
the Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, of whom he soon 
became a special favorite. His father, a man of 
extraordinary mental vigor, had two years previously 
retired from the pastorate of Summer-street Church ; 
and was subsequently appointed Judge of the Court 
of Common Pleas for the County of Norfolk, which 




THE BIRTH-PLACE OF EDWARD EVERETT, DORCHESTER, MASS. 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 41 

office he held until his death in 1802. He was him- 
self a beautiful type of the Everett Family, and, 
indeed, of the industrious, quiet, benignant, and 
philomathical citizens of our old honored Norfolk 
County. 

Young Edward began his education at the village 
school on Meeting-house Hill, in his native town, 
under the charge of Miss Lucy, daughter of Noah 
Clapp, Esq. He was then three years old ; and his 
first misfortune in life, he himself has said, was the 
loss of the " blue paper cover from one corner " of his 
primer, which then constituted his whole library. 
He came afterwards, while in Dorchester, under the 
instruction of the Rev. J. B. Howe and Rev. W. Al- 
len • and here commenced his oratorial career by the 
recitation, at a public exhibition, of the " Rittle Roan 
Colt,"— 

" Pray how should I, a little child, 
In speaking make a figure ? " — 

written expressly for him by his affectionate pastor, 
who, in the expression "little roan," refers to the 
color of his curling hair. 

Soon after the decease of his father, which pro- 
duced a profound impression of sorrow upon the ten- 
der mind of Edward, the family removed to Boston, 
where, at the age of nine (April, 1803), he com- 
menced attending the public reading and writing 



42 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

school taught by Masters Little and Tileston, in 
North Bennet Street. Mr. Ezekiel Little, a graduate 
of Harvard College in 1784, was a popular instructor 
in his day, and with the aid of Mr. Caleb Bingham's 
two excellent class reading-books, the " Columbian 
Orator" and the "American Preceptor," succeeded in 
teaching his pupils how to read with animation and 
propriety, and in inspiring them with a love of decla- 
mation. We may easily conceive how modestly, and 
yet how beautifully, the young orator would pro- 
nounce such pieces as — 

" You'd scarce expect one of my age 
To speak in public on the stage," — 

which his clever kinsman, Mr. David Everett, had 
furnished for the former school-book ; or with what 
winning grace he would repeat such patriotic lines as 
Dr. Dwight's in the latter excellent work, — 

" Columbia ! Columbia ! to glory arise, — 
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies," — 

for, even in early boyhood, he possessed a boy's 
sweet, silvery eloquence. His other teacher, John 
Tileston,* was what might be called a " character." 

* The book in which Master Tileston kept an account with his scholars 
between 1760 and 1765 (when he evidently kept a private school), con- 
taining several hundred names, was presented to this Society a few years 
since by Dr. Lewis, the President; and is now in its archives. Tt illus- 



IN MEMOKY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 43 

He was an old man (having been born in Brain tree 
in 1738), who wore a large horse-hair wig, and who 
wiped the ink from the pen on his little finger, and 
then from his finger on the frosty locks just beneath 
his bushy peruke. He was short and thick ; and al- 
though his right hand had been burned, and the 
chords of it drawn together, his penmanship was 
quite respectable; and he taught the boy — of whom 
he afterwards became so proud, and who, I think, in 
1823, was instrumental in obtaining for him a pension 
of $600 from the city — that plain, even, clear, char- 

trates perfectly Mr. Everett's statement, that "Master Tileston laid the 
foundation for a beautiful old-fashioned handwriting, without flourishes, 
and almost equal to copperplate;" and shows good reason why Mr. Everett 
in 1859, half a ce-ntury after he attended his school, at the dedication of a 
new schoolhouse on the same spot, should say that he " should ever feel 
grateful to Master Tileston for having deprived him in early life of the 
distinction which rests upon writing a hand which nobody can read." 

The Society has also among its manuscripts, presented by its aged and 
early member, the well-known divine, Rev. William Jenks, D.D., a list of 
Master Tileston's public school from 1778 to 1790, with the date of the en- 
trance of each scholar written 'out in a beautiful hand a few years since by 
a venerable and highly respectable citizen of Boston, Edward Cruft, Esq., 
who entered the school about twenty years before Mr. Everett, and more 
than ten years before Mr. Everett's birth. There were six hundred and 
twenty-seven scholars received into the school during these twelve years, 
only four or five of whom are supposed to be now alive ; viz., Timothy 
Hall, Edwai'd Cruft, William Jenks, and Isaac Harris, of Boston. William 
Cazneau was living a few months since in San Francisco. 

There are quite a number of citizens now living, who were at Master 
Tileston's school about the same time with Mr. Everett, who universally 
bear testimony to the remarkable scholarship of Mr. Everett at that early 
period of his school-days. 



44 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

acteristic handwriting which he retained even up to 
that touching letter written to his daughter, Mrs. H. 
A. Wise, two days before his death, in which he says, 
alluding to his indisposition, "I have turned the 
corner. Ever your affectionate papa, E. E." 

As these early, fostering influences have such a 
direct bearing on the stately tree that rises heaven- 
ward by them and through them, you will pardon 
me, I feel assured, for quoting a few lines from a 
speech in which Mr. Everett himself refers to his 
teachers and his studies in the North Bennet-street 
School : " Master Little, in spite of his name, was a 
giant in stature, — six feet four at least, — and some- 
what wedded to the past. He struggled earnestly 
against the change then taking place in the pronun- 
ciation of u, and insisted on our saying monooment 
and natur. But I acquired under his tuition what 
was thought, in those days, a very tolerable knowl- 
edge of Lindley Murray's abridgment of English 
grammar; and, at the end of the year, could parse 
almost any sentence in the "American Preceptor." 
Master Tileston was a writing-master of the old 
school. He set the copies himself, and taught that 
beautiful old Boston handwriting, which, if I do not 
mistake, has, in the march of innovation (which is 
not always the same thing as improvement), been 
changed very little for the better. Master Tileston 
was advanced in- years, and had found a qualification 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 45 

for his calling as a writing-master in what might have 
seemed, at first, to threaten to be an obstruction. 
The fingers of his right hand had been contracted 
and stiffened in early life by a burn, but were fixed 
in just the position to hold a pen and a penknife, and 
nothing else. As they were also considerably indu- 
rated, they served as a convenient instrument of dis- 
cipline. A corjy badly written, or a blotted page, 
was sometimes visited with an infliction which would 
have done no discredit to the beak of a bald eagle. 
His long, deep desk was a perfect curiosity-shop of 
confiscated balls, tops, penknives, marbles, and jews- 
harps, the accumulation of forty years. I desire, how- 
ever, to speak of him with gratitude ; for he put me 
on the track of an acquisition which has been ex- 
tremely useful to me in after-life, — that of a plain, 
legible hand. I remained at these schools about six- 
teen months, and had the good fortune, in 1804, to 
receive the Franklin medal in the English depart- 
ment." 

The future orator was fortunate in his instructors ; 
for, on leaving the North Bennetrstreet School, he 
entered that of Mr. Ezekiel Webster, whose mental 
powers were equalled only by those of his brother 
Daniel, who for a brief period had the school in 
charge. 

What secret aspirations for honorable fame were 
awakened, what hidden springs of thought were set 



46 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

in motion, what sacred fires were kindled in the 
grateful pupil's breast, by these two master-minds, we 
cannot tell ; yet this we know, that a sympathy and 
affection were engendered here, the tranquil surface 
of whose strong current political rivalries could not 
ruffle, but which moved along broader and deeper to 
the unsounded ocean of eternal love ; and of it the 
immortal jurist has thus touchingly remarked: "We 
now and then," writes he to Mr. Everett, under date 
of July 21, 1852, "see stretching across the heavens 
a clear, blue, cerulean sky, without cloud or mist 
or haze ; and such appears to me our acquaintance, 
from the time when I heard you for a week recite 
your lessons in the little schoolhouse in Short Street 
to the date hereof." * 

The next year (1806), young Everett entered the 
Latin School, then on School Street, and under the 
care of the learned but eccentric William Biglow. 
This instructor was an ardent lover of the languages, 
had written one or two school-books, and possessed 
in a remarkable degree the ability of inspiring the 
minds of his pupils — and this is one of the highest 
qualifications of an educator — with a love of learn- 
ing and philosophy. " Instruire," most truly says 
Aimee Martin, "c'est inspirer;" and this the kind, 
old-fashioned, and poetical pedagogue, William Big- 

* Priv. Cor. of Daniel Webster, vol. ii. p. 542. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 47 

low, most certainly did. His encouraging exhorta- 
tion to his pupils used to be, — 

" Fii-st learn to write, then to indite, 
And then a line of Latin ; 
And so by chance you may advance 
To wear a suit of satin." 

Under the tuition of Mr. Biglow, Everett read, as 
if by intuition, Caesar, Cicero's Orations, parts of Vir- 
gil, and the Greek Testament. The study of the 
languages was at that period extremely superficial. 
The analysis of sentences, the derivation of words, 
the philosophy of the subjunctive mode, the delicate 
shades of meaning expressed by the conjunctions, 
particles, and expletives, received but little or no 
attention ; for the light of German philology had 
not as yet dawned upon this country : but Edward 
Everett received with great avidity such instruction 
as was then imparted, and made such progress in the 
classics as to secure again the Franklin medal for 
1806 ; thus giving another earnest of a brilliant lit- 
erary career. 

At the age of thirteen, — that is, in the early part 
of 1807, — he entered Phillips Exeter Academy, then 
under the judicious care of Dr. Benjamin Abbott, and 
there completed the studies preparatory to his admis- 
sion to Harvard College in the autumn of the same 
year. The school was then, as at present, the Rugby of 



48 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

New England; and the "gentlemanly Edward," as he 
was termed, here soon acquired the esteem of teachers 
and associates, together with the enviable reputation 
of being a faithful, industrious, and brilliant scholar. 
Among his classmates at the time, I notice the well- 
known names of Augustus Thorndike, John S. Sleeper, 
and Thomas H. Perkins. His brother (the late Alex- 
ander Hill Everett) and Mr. Nathan Hale were assistr 
ant teachers in the institution ; and Edward had his 
room with them at Mrs. Benjamin Conner's, on the 
south side of Front Street, between the academy and 
the river. Though a mere stripling, the ambitious 
schoolboy, on his first entrance into the recitation- 
room, as if conscious of his power, inarched up, and 
took his place at the head of the Latin class ; nor did 
he fail to retain that enviable position to the end. 
He is remembered as being then slender in form, neat 
in dress, and polite and dignified in manner. His 
hair was a fine auburn, or what the Latins might 
have termed Jfavus ; and his voice had a silvery 
sweetness, — 

" So soft, so clear, 
The listener held his breath to hear." 

He read his favorite Tully and Virgil with ease 
and fluency ; so that the Latin seemed as a new and 
living language on his melodious tongue. His eye 
was quick as an electric flash to discern a touch of 
grace or beauty in a classic writer ; and his critical 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 49 

acumen, his insight into the meaning, his apprehen- 
sion of the spirit, of an ancient author, excited con- 
stant admiration in the mind of his instructor. In 
declamation, as in the class-recitations, young Ever- 
ett stood primus inter pares. 

The society of Exeter was at that period noted for 
its learning and refinement, and doubtless shed a 
genial influence upon the opening powers of the 
aspiring student. At the close of his academical 
career, during which he had won the good will of 
those who knew him, he pronounced the salutatory 
oration in Latin, which Dr. Abbott kept as a model 
of elegant Latinity for succeeding boys to imitate, 
and becpieathed to his able successor, Dr. Soule, as 
a rich legacy. It is written in Mr. Everett's well- 
known and beautiful style of penmanship imparted 
by the venerable John Tileston, and commences 
with a fine allusion to the brightness of the day and 
the dignity of the assembly. It is a remarkable speci- 
men of composition in a dead language for a boy of 
only thirteen summers, and shows how well his taste 
and his ear had even then been trained. The deliv- 
ery is said to have been as graceful as the language 
itself was elegant. The young orator received with 
reverent attention the instructions of Dr. Abbott,* 

* "He possessed the happy skill," says Mr. Everett, "which I am 
gratified to say has not died with him, of governing a school by persuasion 
and influence, and not by force and terror." 

7 



50 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

then iii his prime : he sought for knowledge with 
such avidity as the bee seeks for nectar ; and what 
he once secured he never lost. He seemed even then 
to have realized with Hesiod, that "the gods have 
placed sweat in the pathway to excellence ; " and 
he was willing to go through the one in order to 
attain the other. 

Entering Harvard College in the autumn of 1807 
as the youngest member of his class, he came imme- 
diately under the instruction of the accomplished 
Levi Frisbie, then tutor in Latin, who was himself a 
poet, and had the rare faculty of investing the dryest 
principles of grammar with the golden glow of a bril- 
liant imagination, and of enchanting the minds of his 
class with his elegant impromptu disquisitions on 
the advantages and amenities of literature. John 
Quincy Adams also, to whose memory as a teacher 
Mr. Everett has paid an eloquent tribute, was then 
electrifying the college and the citizens of Cambridge 
with his lectures on rhetoric, which his future eulogist 
heard with rapt attention and delight, and which 
doubtless exercised a potent influence in elevating 
his conceptions of the grand and beautiful, in chasten- 
ing his imagination, and in perfecting his taste. 

Though the youngest, he was perhaps the most 
studious, member of his college-class. He early saw 
that — 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 51 

" The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden night ; 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night ; " — 

and gave himself with the persistent steadiness of an 
old crusader to seek honorem per labor em : so that, 
while cards and dice and wine consumed too many 
of his classmates' precious hours, his own were sa- 
credly devoted to the pages of Homer, Horace, and 
Quintilian. While some were drinking largely of the 
Lethean, he himself drank "deep of the Pierian 
spring." Not content with the assiduous study of 
the college course of the ancient classics, he plunged 
with a kind of ravishing delight into the charmed 
sweets of English literature. He read with keenest 
relish the works of Milton, ever a special favorite ; of 
Pope ; of Addison, the flavor of whose matchless style 
he caught ; of genial Goldsmith ; and of gentle, clear- 
eyed Cowper. The successive poems of Scott, Camp- 
bell, and Byron, he grasped as golden balls, and 
stored them in the rich treasure-house of his reten- 
tive memory. Nor did he fail to draw patriotic 
inspiration, even at that early day, from the lofty 
spirits of Chatham, Burke, and Hamilton. The clas- 
sic Buckminster had returned from Europe in 1807 
with a splendid library, to which his friend Everett 
had the warmest welcome ; and, in his intercourse with 
this young and gifted divine, his zeal for the prose- 



52 N. E. HISTORTC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

cution of belles-lettres studies was greatly quickened 
and sustained. His literary taste, under such foster- 
ing influences, matured so rapidly, that he was in 
the latter part of his college course chosen editor of 
the " Harvard Museum," many of whose elegant arti- 
cles bear the unmistakable stamp of genius. He 
graduated among the first in classical honor; and the 
theme of his Commencement speech, admirably con- 
ceived and beautifully delivered, was " Literary 
Evils." 

During one of his college vacations, as I have been 
informed, he taught the district school in a lonely 
section of East Bridgewater, near the place known 
under the euphonious yet significant cognomen of 
" Birch Swamp ; " whether so called from the liberal 
supplies of the white birch (Betula populifolia), the 
real representative tree of our Bay State, or from the 
necessity of the liberal application of its twigs in 
the advancement of the cause of learning in that 
neighborhood, I shall leave it for the future historian 
of that town to say: but it is not at all improbable, 
that as the venerable trout with speckled sides, from 
Marshfield Brook,- suggested to Mr. Webster the in- 
troduction to one of his most elaborate orations, so 
the trials and turmoils of his belligerent little realm 
of unkempt, unwashed, ungovernable urchins at 
Birch Swamp might have suggested to young Everett 
the whole of his address on " Literary Evils." 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 53 

Mr. Everett's fine scholarship and easy dignity of 
manner raised him to the office of Latin tutor in 
Harvard College at the early age of eighteen (1812); 
and, by the advice of his friend Buckminster, he im- 
mediately commenced the study of theology under 
the direction of Professor Henry Ware, and the elo- 
quent William E. Channing, who was then reading a 
course of lectures to the candidates for the Christian 
ministry at the university. Mr. Everett had already 
won such an enviable reputation as a classical scholar, 
and his demeanor was at the same time so gentle, 
yet imposing, that, though younger than most of the 
students whom he taught, no one of the faculty se- 
cured from them more marked attention, or inspired 
in them a more profound respect. His instructions, 
enriched from the stores of a capacious memory and 
enlivened by the flashes of a fertile fancy, were re- 
ceived with the liveliest emotions of gratitude and 
admiration. There was even then in the name of 
Edward Everett a charm which nerved the aspirant 
for literary honors to nobler efforts and to higher 
achievements. Appointed this year (1812) to deliver 
the Phi Beta Kappa poem, he evinced in the selec- 
tion and treatment of his theme, "American Poets," 
some sacred gleaming of that ardent love of native 
land and literature which flamed up as a pillar of 
fire to lead, and not destroy, — radiant and still 
more radiant to the last. 



54 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

Among other topics, in one of which there is an 
affectionate allusion to his clear friend Buckminster, 
who had. just passed away, he deplores the taste that 
has baptized so many localities with unpoetic, almost 
unutterable names, and anticipates the despair of 
our native Muse in reducing them to rhyme and 
rhythm : — 

" Sings he, dear land, those lakes and streams of thine, 
Some mild Memphremagog murmurs in his line ; 
Some Ameriscoggin dashes by his way, 
Or smooth Connecticut softens in his lay.'' 

But from this barbarous jargon he turns his eyes 
to more hopeful days, when " Frog Pond " shall per- 
haps be changed to soft "Averno ; " and in his song 
we see his reading and his taste, as well as patriotism, 
at that period : — 

" Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock, 
And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth Rock ; 
Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall, 
And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call; 
Our mobs shall wear the wreath of Tasso's Moors, 
And Barbary's coast shall yield to Baltimore's ; 
Here our own bays some native Pope shall grace, 
And lovelier beauties fill Belinda's place ; 
Here future hands shall Goldsmith's village rear, 
And his tired traveller rest his wanderings here ; 
Hodeirah's son shall search our Western plain, 
And our own Gertrude visit us again ; 
Then Branksome towers o'er Hudson's stream be built, 
And Marmion's blood on Monmouth's field be spilt ; 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 55 

Fitz James's horn Niagara's echoes wake, 

And Katrine's lady skim o'er Erie's lake. 

Haste, happy times ! when through these wide domains 

Shall sound the concert of harmonious strains ; 

Through all the clime the softening notes be spread, 

Sung in each grove, and in each hamlet read." 



Ill tracing the course of this clear and gently- 
beaming star upon the morning sky of our Ameri- 
can literature, we come now (1813) into the sacred 
sphere of the Christian ministry, where we find it 
still rising, and shining with a ray yet more serene 
and beautiful. None could so well fill the place of 
the eloquent Buckminster, the early death of whom 
the world of letters was deploring, as the young 
and graceful Latin tutor whose honeyed accents 
were then charming the students of the university. 
Mr. Everett did not disappoint the high expectations 
of the church in Brattle Street: indeed, he never 
disappointed any expectations. High as its beau- 
ideal of pulpit eloquence had been raised, Mr. 
Everett actually surpassed it; and such was the 
radiant beauty of the youthful preacher's person, 
such the extent of his biblical erudition, such the 
elegance of his diction, the correctness of his deliv- 
ery, the power and pathos of his eloquence, and the 
harmonious cadences of his silvery voice, that the 
people were attracted to the sacred fane in crowds, 
and his reputation was very soon established as the 



56 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

first pulpit orator of the clay. His power of render- 
ing the spirit of a noble hymn, I think, was never 
equalled; and some of you, perhaps, can well remem- 
ber how the profoundest chords of feeling have been 
stirred, as if an angel's hand swept over them, when 
such words as these of Dr. Doddridge dropped all 
glowing from his melodious tongue : — 

" Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, 
With all your feeble light ! 
Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, 
Pale empress of the night ! 

And thou refulgent orb of day, 

In brighter flames arrayed, 
My soul, that springs beyond thy sphere, 

No more demands thine aid. 

Ye stars are but the shining dust 

Of my divine abode ; 
The pavement of those heavenly courts, 

Where I shall reign with God." 

When Mr. Everett delivered his celebrated sermon 
on the words, " Brethren, the time is short," to a 
vast audience in the old Hall of the House of 
Representatives at Washington, February, 1820, he 
was heard with breathless silence, and many of 
the audience were moved to tears. "Mr. King 
told me," Judge Story writes, " he never heard 
a discourse so full of unction, eloquence, and good 
taste." 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 57 

By a rigid economy of time, Mr. Everett was not 
only able to meet the onerous duties of his pastorate, 
but he also found opportunity to write his " Defence 
of Christianity," a work of about five hundred pages, 
published in Boston, 1814, against the attacks of the 
erratic George B. English upon the authenticity of 
the New Testament. Mr. Allibone, considering this 
work as a composition of a mere youth, affirms it to 
be "one of the most remarkable productions of the 
human mind;" and when we consider the breadth 
of the argument, the scriptural learning, the critical 
acumen, and the elevation of the style, we cannot 
well dissent from his opinion. 

Immediately after the publication of this work, 
Mr. Everett was invited to the Eliot Professorship 
of Greek in Harvard College, with permission to 
travel in Europe previous to entering on his ardu- 
ous duties. Leaving Boston in the spring of 1815, 
he arrived in London in season to hear the echoes 
rolling from the dreadful field of Waterloo ; and 
then, proceeding with his friend George Ticknor to 
the University of Gottingen, he there wisely spent 
two years as a student, perfecting himself in the 
knowledge of the German language, literature, and 
civil and educational systems. Here, under na- 
tive teachers, he perused the religious hymn of the 
"Messiah" by Klopstock, the "Laocoon" of Lessing, 
the " Don Carlos," " Wallenstein," and "Marie Stuart" 



58 N. E. HISTOKIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

of Schiller, the "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" 
of Goethe, the "Criticisms" of the Schlegels, the 
"^Esthetics " of Winkelmann, the philosophic systems 
of Kant and Lessing, and the biblical criticisms of 
Schultz, Ernesti, Rosenmiiller, and others, in their 
own or the Latin language. He also read with avid- 
ity the philological and grammatical works of Bopp, 
Buttmann, Jacobs, Adelung, Zumpt, Doring, Rost, 
Becker, Grimm, Hupfeld, and others, as specially 
preparatory to the duties and demands of his 
Greek professorship. He gained such a mastery 
over the German language and literature as to pre- 
pare an article for the " Gottingen Literary Gazette," 
to the great acceptance of the venerable Eichhorn, 
its learned editor. On leaving Gottingen, he re- 
paired immediately to Paris, where he passed the 
winter of 1817-18 in the acquisition of the Romaic, 
or modern Greek, language. How profitably that 
time was spent may be inferred from his able arti- 
cle on " Coray's Aristotle " in the North- American 
Review, October, 1824. In the ensuing spring, Mr. 
Everett, in pursuance of his design, passed some 
time in examining the systems of the ancient 
scholastic institutions of Oxford and Cambridge ; 
and then, proceeding north, visited the lakes and 
Abbotsford, where he was most cordially enter- 
tained by that genial "Wizard of the North," 
whose Homeric tale of " Marmion " and historic 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 59 

" Waverley " had beguiled him of so many happy 
hours, and whose inimitable '" Rob Roy" had just 
sprung forth, as by the rod of an enchanter, in at- 
testation to the marvellous fecundity of his genius. 
Returning home in 1819, Mr. Everett entered at 
once, to the great satisfaction of the college, upon 
the duties of his professorship; and was doubt- 
less then the most accomplished Greek as well 
as general scholar in America. The celebrated 
Victor Cousin, who published a French translation 
of Plato in 1812, and who was with Mr. Everett 
in Germany, observed that he was one of the best 
Grecians he ever knew; and his accurate translation 
of Buttmann's Greek Grammar (published in 1822), 
his carefully prepared edition of Jacobs' Greek Read- 
er (published in 1823 by his brother Oliver), his 
splendid lectures in Harvard, and his learned articles 
on the Greek literature, in the North-American Re- 
view, confirm us in the opinion of the distinguished 
French savant. 

Mr. Everett's extensive learning, ranging over the 
whole field of English literature, art, and science, 
and extending not only to the ancient classical and 
Hebrew, but also to the German, Italian, and French 
languages; his knowledge gained by travel; his 
acquaintance with such distinguished men as Lord 
Byron, Sir Humphrey Davy, Lord Jeffrey, Thomas 
Campbell, Sir James Mackintosh, John Gibson Lock- 



60 N. E. HISTOEIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

hart, and Sir Walter Scott ; his masterly power of 
analysis ; his keen perception of the true and beauti- 
ful, as well as of the false and outre, together with 
an easy flow of language, and a clear and popular 
style, — qualified him pre-eminently for the office of 
an editor; and accordingly the management of the 
North- American Review was, in 1820, committed 
to his hands. This tower of strength in American 
literature was begun by the accomplished William 
Tudor in 1815. It grew out of the "Monthly An- 
thology," which first appeared under the direction 
of Mr. Phineas Adams, a school-teacher of Boston, 
in 1803. A club of literary gentlemen was soon 
after formed, consisting of William Tudor, Dr. Kirk- 
land, Joseph S. Buckminster, Alexander H. Everett, 
and others, who each agreed to furnish an article 
for the "Anthology" in turn: and although, after the 
publication of ten volumes, the work was, for want 
of patronage, brought to a close, the literary spirit 
which it had aided to inflame was still increasing; 
so that, four years afterwards, Mr. Tudor ventured 
to commence the publication of the North-Ameri- 
can Review, which did not, however, assume, until 
three years later (1818), the character of a quar- 
terly. Mr. Tudor's chief aim in establishing the Re- 
view was to emancipate the citizens of the United 
States from dependence on foreign opinion in every 
thing regarding literature, since we were then as 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 61 

deeply involved in literary as before in political ser- 
vitude ; and also to vindicate the claims of our own 
writers, and to cherish American learning : he him- 
self avows, that, in originally undertaking the work, 
he flattered himself " that it would eventually come 
under the care of a gentleman singularly qualified 
for the task of editing it."* That gentleman was 
Edward Everett. I hold in my hand Mr. Everett's 
first number. What a host of delightful associations 
this green-covered volume of the North-American 
Review for January, 1820, now awakens ! What a 
brilliant constellation this star, that 

'• Flamed in the forehead of our morning sky," 

led on ! How vividly it brings to mind the honored 
names of Webster, Story, Peabody, Channing, Felton, 
Sparks, Prescott, Ticknor, Bancroft, Irving, and their 
compeers ! What a mighty stimulus it has given to 
the authors of America! How nobly it has main- 
tained the spirit of genuine culture ! How fair, how 
firm, how dignified, how scholarly, in its tone ! how 
generous, how lofty, in its aim ! What a vast range 
of mature and elevated thought the successive series 
of this old quarterly embodies ! What a long pha- 
lanx of literary men in every profession it has en- 
lightened, cheered, and comforted ! What a mighty 
kindling influence it has exercised in defending, puri- 

* Vide Tudor 's Miscellanies, p. 53. 



62 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

fying, beautifying, crystallizing, our country's litera- 
ture ! Who of us, from the smiling spring of boyhood 
to " the sear and yellow leaf," does not acknowledge 
himself a debtor to the fascinating pages of the North- 
American Review? and who of us does not say, 
" Long may it live as the Argus-eyed guardian of our 
national culture, the prince of the noble company 
of the quarterlies " ? 

But, for this radiance shed upon our intellectual 
life, we are under lasting obligations to the scholastic 
attainments and resplendent genius of Edward Ever- 
ett. In the very first article for January, 1820, he 
made his record, giving the pledge of what this 
periodical was thence to be. A new order of things 
began; and the North- American Review came at 
once to be an institution and a power in the world of 
letters. At this period, biblical criticism was almost 
unknown in this country. The philological investi- 
gations of the European scholars upon the text of 
the sacred . volume had not then reached us : in- 
deed, the original tongues of the Bible were but im- 
perfectly understood. Mr. Buckminster's edition of 
Griesbach (1809) was almost the only work in this 
line of study America had as yet attempted. Our old 
divines, however pious, were men of routine : the 
textus receptus satisfied them. If a suspicious-looking 
phrase were found within the covers of the holy 
Book, they esteemed its very presence there as a 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 63 

proof positive of its inspiration : they deemed it 
sacrilegious to investigate a subject so fixed and set- 
tled in their minds by that great word, "inspiration." 
In his very first article, which is upon Memorie sto- 
riche sugli studj e sidle produzione of the celebrated 
Oriental scholar, Dr. John B. de Eossi, Mr. Everett, 
in beautiful language, unfolded the critical research- 
es of the great philologists of the age into the 
texts of Scripture, and displayed an affluence of eru- 
dition which struck the public with astonishment. 
This article opened the half-closed eyes of theological 
professors to the labors of the European grammarians, 
and the stores of biblical philology beyond the sea ; 
giving an impulse to the study of sacred literature, 
which continues steadily increasing to the present 
day. Article after article of great ability, embracing 
almost every topic within the range of human knowl- 
edge, continued to flow from Mr. Everett's facile pen ; 
so that the subscription to the Review for the first 
year was at least quadrupled, and some of the num- 
bers passed through two or three editions. " If you 
continue to write thus powerfully," says Judge Story 
in a letter dated Jan. 15, 1820, "in such a strain of 
manly, vigorous sense, with such glowing eloquence, 
you will humble all of us, but nobly exalt the pride 
and character of our country." And Mr. Webster, 
writing to him of the Review for July, 1821, says 
in his hearty manner, "I think this number exceedeth 



64 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGTCAL SOCIETY. 

all its predecessors in glory. I verily think we have 
nothing so good as this number. Sic itur ad astra." * 
During his editorship of four years, Mr. Everett 
contributed some fifty papers to the Review, of 
which those upon the " History of Grecian Art," 
Tuclor's "Letters," Faux's "England and America" 
(commended by Webster), "Lord Bacon," Walsh's 
"Appeal," the "Zodiac of Denderah," "Aristopha- 
nes and Socrates," and Simond's " Switzerland," may 
be considered the most elaborate ; while those upon 
Symmes's " Voyages to the Internal World," and the 
"English Grammar" of John Barrett, the famous 
pedagogue of Hopkinton (North- American Review, 
April, 1821), are certainly the most keenly sarcastic 
and amusing. He contributed as many more arti- 
cles during the editorship of his brother, of which 
that on Prince Piickler Muskau, January, 1833, at- 
tracted much attention. 

We have now another modulation in the harmony 
of a beautiful life, and a richer flow of music out of 
the well-tuned chords. The eloquent Greek profes- 
sor is to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration (1824) 
at Cambridge. It is an occasion of uncommon inter- 
est : the friend and companion-in-arms of the " Father 
of our Country" — the liberty-loving Lafayette, hon- 
ored guest of the nation — is to be present; and much 
of the learning, grace, and beauty of New England 

* Priv. Cor., vol. i. p. 15. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 65 

will surround him. The demand for "thoughts that 
breathe, and words that burn," is pressing : will the 
orator of the day come up to meet it ? He takes for 
his theme "The Circumstances favorable to the Prog- 
ress of Literature in America," — a subject warm, and 
living in the best affections of his heart : and he un- 
folds it and spreads it out with such thrilling power 
and beauty before that brilliant assembly; summon- 
ing up illustrations from the whole republic of letters ; 
setting forth the literary prospects of this magnificent 
birth-land of the free so vividly, so radiantly; raising 
the conceptions of his hearers so grandly, in wave 
after wave of more than Ciceronian eloquence, to the 
glorious days to come ; and closing with such a soul- 
moving allusion to the illustrious guest, — that the 
hearts of the enraptured throng are swayed as the 
surges of ocean by the storm-king, and the speaker is 
acknowledged to be the first classic orator in Ameri- 
ca. The address was immediately translated into 
French by the masterly pen of Chateaubriand ; and 
such was its effect upon the community at large, that 
Mr. Everett was soon chosen by the young men of 
his district in Middlesex to represent them in Con- 
gress, where he took his seat in December, 1825. Of 
his political course I do not intend now to speak, 
further than to say, that through his ten years of 
Congressional life and strife ; through his guberna- 
torial career, from which lie was relieved in 1839 



66 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

by only one out of more than a hundred thousand 
votes; while ambassador (1841) at the court of St. 
James; while Secretary of State under President 
Fillmore (1852); while United-States senator (1853), 
— he did not at any time forget or overlook the cul- 
ture or the spread of Letters, but faithfully devoted 
every leisure moment to the advancement of human 
learning.* 

Mr. Everett loved his country with a downright, 
hearty, steady, burning affection. He loved the peo- 
ple ; he believed in their education and regeneration ; 
and that the lofty breathings of poesy, the serene 
effulgence of philosophy, the brilliant discoveries of 
science, the classic lore of the student, were the birth- 
right and patrimony of freemen. He felt himself to 
be a debtor to the people ; and instead of holding, as 
many do, the garnered stores of literary wealth, to 
which every age and every clime contributed, for 
selfish ends, he now made it the leading purpose of 
his life to transfuse into the public mind, by the re- 
sistless power of his eloquence, the rare and precious 
gems of wisdom he had drawn with the cunning hand 
of the alchemist from God's wide world of beauty and 

* Volumes published by Mr. Everett, — Defence of Christianity 
(1814); Buttmann's Greek Grammar (1822); Jacobs' Greek Reader 
(1824); Orations and Speeches, 8vo (1836); Life of General Stark; 
Importance of Practical Education, &c. (183G) ; Life of D. Webster 
(1852); Orations, &c. (1853), 2 vols. 8vo, 3d ed.; Orations, Discourses, 
&c, 1 vol. (1858); Life of Washington, 1 vol. (1860); Mount -Vernon 
Papers. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 67 

intelligence ; and we trace him all through his bright 
career, with ready pen or living tongue still cherish- 
ing, encouraging, enlightening, elevating, the minds 
of the people* 

Most gracefully, kindly, efficiently, he spent his 
days of recreation from administrative and political 
drudgery in passing over the strait and starched 
learning of the university to the busy workshop, 
the noisy manufactory, and quiet farm-house. There 
are few artisans or operatives or husbandmen of 
New England who have not had their toils light- 
ened, their views extended, their thoughts elevated, 
their eyes moistened, and the tide of patriotism 
deepened, by some agricultural, scientific, centennial, 
educational, or charitable address of Mr. Everett. 
He stood as a city on a hill, whose light could not 
be hid ; and many a weary pilgrim is now toiling 
hopefully up the hill beneath that light. While 
Governor, he established the Board of Education, 
and wrote one or two of its reports ; he introduced 
the Normal-school system; instituted the surveys 
of the natural history of the State ; using every 
means available for the advancement of popular 
education and for the diffusion of useful knowledge 
among the people. During his residence in the 

* "If you had asked him, the day he died, what had been the central 
idea of his life, he would have said it was the education of the people. 
His life was full of it."— Atlantic Monthly, March, 1865, p. 344. 



68 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

Villa Carreggi, near Florence (1841), he trans- 
mitted many works of art to this country; and, 
on his return, munificently assisted in laying the 
foundation of your Public Library. As President of 
Harvard College (1848-49), he improved the dis- 
cipline and the course of study : indeed, as Mr. 
Bancroft justly observes, "the university has never 
in our day had a more faithful and able chief." 

Of the orations and addresses which Mr. Everett 
gave to the world through a long series of labori- 
ous years, I may, perhaps, mention his speech at 
Plymouth, on the Pilgrims (1824), as being of a 
high order of eloquence. The rhetorical vision of 
the "Mayflower" has, perhaps, never been surpassed. 
He makes you walk upon the ocean, and behold 
the ship before you. "I see them . . . driven in 
fury before the raging tempest on the high and 
giddy waves. The awful voice of the storm howls 
through the rigging ; the laboring masts seem strain- 
ing from their base ; the dismal sound of the pump 
is heard ; the ship leaps, as it were, from billow to 
billow; the ocean breaks and settles with ingulfing 
floods over the floating deck, and beats, with deaden- 
ing, shivering weight, against the staggering vessel." 
Even Cicero's celebrated "Videor enim mihi banc 
urbem videre," &c, is not more vivid. His eulogy 
on Lafayette (1834), and his Battle of Lexington 
(1835), in which the fountains of patriotism were. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 69 

unlocked as by a master-hand, were an advance 
upon his earlier record. His "Anecdotes of Early 
Local History" (1833) is a felicitous and charming 
production, and his speech at the festival of Exeter 
(1838) is an admirable academical address. His 
tribute to the memory of Dr. Bowditch, translator 
of the "Mecanique Celeste," in the same year, dis- 
closes something of his lively interest in the prog- 
ress of science, and his profound appreciation of a 
self-made and vigorous mind. His agricultural and 
university speeches in England were received with 
remarkable favor; and his eulogy on John Quincy 
Adams in Faneuil Hall, in 1848, as that on the death 
of Daniel Webster, in the same place, in 1852, are 
perfect models of this far from easy kind of compo- 
sition. In his elaborate oration before the citizens 
of Dorchester (July 4, 1855), he gives some touch- 
ing reminiscences of his early days, when as a school- 
boy, fifty six or seven years before, he climbed what 
seemed to him then " the steep acclivity of Meeting- 
house Hill;" and proceeds with signal power to 
evolve from the annals of the town the principles 
pertaining to the foundation and prosperity of our 
civil institutions, and the revolution to which they 
led. His address " On the Uses of Astronomy," the 
next year (1856), at the opening of the Dudley 
Observatory at Albany, is one of marvellous power 
and beauty. In reading it, one would suppose that 



70 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

Mr. Everett's whole life had been devoted to the 
study of that soul-inspiring science which he ad- 
vocated. Some passages rise up to the highest 
point of the sublime in art, which man, I think, has 
ever reached. J. J. Rousseau had described a sunrise, 
in his "Emile" (liv. iii. p. 181), with the full glow 
and coloring of the French Muse ; but it remained 
for Mr. Everett to bring in the transcendent poetry 
of science to set forth this daily miracle of God. 

What kind of spirit is in man that he should prefer 
the sluggish slumbers of his morning pillow to such 
a scene as this ? — "I had occasion," says Mr. Everett, 
"a few weeks since, to take the early train from Pro- 
vidence to Boston, and for this purpose rose at two 
o'clock in the morning. Every thing around was 
wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken 
only by what seemed to me at that hour the un- 
earthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, 
serene, midsummer's night : the sky was without a 
cloud, the winds were whist. The moon, then in the 
last quarter, had just risen ; and the stars shone with 
a spectral lustre, but little affected by her presence. 
Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the clay; 
the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet 
influence in the east ; Lyra sparkled near the zenith ; 
Andromeda veiled her newly discovered glories from 
the naked eye in the south ; the steady Pointers, far 
beneath the pole, looked merely up from the depths 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 71 

of the north to their sovereign. Such was the glo- 
rious spectacle as I entered the train. As we pro- 
ceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more 
perceptible ; the intense blue of the sky began to 
soften ; the smaller stars, like little children, went first 
to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melt- 
ed together ; but the bright constellations of the 
west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the 
wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels 
hidden from mortal eyes shifted the scenery of the 
heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glo- 
ries of dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly 
gray ; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ; 
the east began to kindle. Faint streams of purple 
soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial 
concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the 
morning light, which came pouring down from 
above in one great ocean of radiance ; till at 
length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of 
purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and 
turned the dewy teardrops of flower and leaf into 
rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the ever- 
lasting gates of the morning were thrown wide 
open ; and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too 
severe for the gaze of man, began his course. 

"I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient 
Magians, who, in the morning of the world, went up 
to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the 



72 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. 
But I am filled with amazement when I am told that 
in this enlightened age, and in the heart of the 
Christian world, there are persons who can witness 
this daily manifestation of the power and wisdom 
of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts, ' There 
is no God.' " 

His fine eulogy on Mr. Thomas Dowse (1858) will 
ever be regarded by the bibliophilist as a charming 
record of his own peculiar pleasures in the midst of 
the rare and valuable tomes of his library ; while his 
commemorative address at the inauguration of the 
statue of Daniel Webster (September, 1859) equals, 
in dignity of style and sentiment, the noblest of the 
oraisons funebres of Bossuet. 

In his later clays, Mr. Everett's physical system 
was weakened by disease ; but the light within re- 
mained undimmed : he still " stood up as a fire, and 
his word burned as a lamp ; " and when the first mut- 
terings of that volcano which has broken forth, and 
is shedding such lurid gleams over the land he loved 
so well, were faintly heard, he lifted up his voice in a 
magnificent tribute to the " Father of his Country." 
He went from city to city, North and South, — re- 
peating it as many as a hundred and twenty-nine 
times, — if perchance he might unite the divided 
hearts of his countrymen around one common centre 
still, and avert the dread catastrophe. In the mean 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 73 

time, he composed, in a vigorous, chaste, and ani- 
mated style, a brief biography of Washington (1860). 
He wrote also a brilliant series of articles for a 
weekly paper, in aid of his laudable design ; and in 
turning over one of those essays just now, upon the 
" Trucks and Truckmen of Boston," I am more than 
ever surprised at the quickness of his eye, the extent 
of his observation, and the felicity of his description. 
But, when he felt the direful shock upon us, — the 
bands of the blessed Union, around whose majestic 
pillars he himself had thrown so many garlands of 
praise, about to be rent asunder, — he came forth in 
the resplendent power of an eloquence baptized anew 
in such holy fire * as Milton drew from heaven's im- 
maculate altar, and enkindled, as no other tongue 
could do, the hearts of the people to rally and save 
the high-towering temple of Freedom from destruc- 
tion ; to throw the shield of their united arms out 
over the oppressed, and, by the flashing of the red 
artillery, point the path to liberty and peace. Living 
by his favorite adage, — "Nil actum reputans, dum 
quid superesset agendum," — his light shone brighter 
and brighter to the perfect day. The most beauti- 
ful act of his life was his last, — crying, through his 
noble charities, for that foe who strikes the quivering 

* " Ma il suo voler piu nel voler s' infiamma 
Del suo signor, come favilla in Gamma." 

Tasmi: Ger. Lib., canto i. 18. 

in 



74 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

side of Liberty, as once another foe was striking Him 
who gave the boon : " Father, forgive them ; for they 
know not what they do." 

What, then, are the leading traits and character- 
istics of the lamented Everett as a literary man ? 
I answer, A natural quickness of parts, together 
with a corresponding flexible and delicate physical 
organization, which enabled him to seize upon knowl- 
edge with surprising certainty, and bear away the 
sweets of it, while others were still hesitating to com- 
mence the task. He acquired the art, for which 
Webster was so remarkable, of reading by the page, 
instead of by the line, — grasping the writer's mean- 
ing at a glance. As an eagle on the wing, he 
pounced upon his game, and never missed. This, 
with his most loyal memory, made him, par excel- 
lence, a ready man, — ready not only to extract the 
nectar from the flowers of literature, but to summon, 
as by a magician's wancl, whatever he desired into 
immediate use. Most of you, gentlemen, must have 
observed how quick his mind was, in his speaking, to 
lay hold of any passing circumstance, and to weave 
it naturally into the structure of his discourse, leav- 
ing neither joint nor suture visible. On one occasion, 
through the failure of another, he was called on sud- 
denly to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cam- 
bridge. Mr. Longfellow had agreed to read a poem 
at the close of the address ; but, finding that Mr. Ev- 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 75 

erett was to make it, he insisted upon going through 
his part in advance of the distinguished orator. Mr. 
Everett heard the new production with attention ; 
but it were hard to conceive the surprise of the author 
of " Evangeline " to hear, a few moments afterwards, 
the most beautiful lines of his imprinted poem drop- 
ping as pearls from the orator's lips, and admirably 
■ turned to the embellishment of his own discourse. 

So, if I may bring another illustration, as Mr. 
Everett was one day speaking at a Commencement 
dinner, I think it was, a sudden flash of lightning 
startled the assembly, and a deafening peal of thun- 
der rent the air ; when, quick as the, gleam itself, the 
speaker introduced that strain from Virgil, where 
the Cyclops forge the thunderbolts of Jove beneath 
Mount iEtna, — 

" Ac veluti, lentis Cyclopes fulinina massis 
Ciim properant, alii taurinis follibus auras 
Accipiunt, redduntque : alii stridentia tingunt 
Aera lacu : gemit hnpositis incudibus iEtna : 
Illi inter sese magna vi brachia tollunt 
In numerum, versantque tenaci forcipe ferrum," — 

and went along with his discourse, astonishing the 
company as much by his quotation as did Jupiter by 
his thunderbolts. 

It is evident that his method was exceedingly 
severe. He classified with rigid care his literary 
treasures as he gained them. He had a place for 



76 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

every thing, and every thing was in its place. As 
in a well-arranged cabinet of curiosities, every point 
of knowledge had its appropriate alcove, shelf, or 
drawer, in his capacious and well-ordered mind. He 
was systematic and punctilious in respect to the very 
minutest things : he kept a copy of every letter he 
wrote, down to the orders sent to the public libraries 
for books ; and these orders were neatly written, 
enclosed in an envelope, and carefully sealed. Every 
article written for the papers was prepared, even to 
the capital letters and commas, precisely as he de- 
sired to have it printed. The arrangement of his 
splendid library,, from costly folio to the most trivial 
note of his correspondence, was systematic and com- 
plete. It was by this exactitude and uniform system 
that he was enabled to perform such an amount of 
literary labor, and still to give so much time to the 
demands of society and humanity. To this we owe, 
in part, the faultlessness of his style and delivery ; 
and when we see how God descends to little things, 
even to the moulding of the exquisite shell of the 
ocean or to the modulation of the nightingale's melo- 
dious note, shall we impugn the wisdom that thus 
attempts to imitate Him ? 

I need not repeat to you that his industry was un- 
remitting. He was incessantly at the block of mar- 
ble, seeking for the beau-ideal concealed within. We 
behold the perfect statue : we cry, " How beautiful ! " 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 77 

forgetting the days and nights of wasting toil it cost 
the self-denying artist. Through his whole life, Mr. 
Everett was a hard, untiring student. Nature had 
done well for him: but. the magical timbre of his voice, 
that could so search into the soul, and draw respon- 
sive echoes from the dullest ; the graceful attitudes, 
the faultless gesticulation, the finished touches of his 
lucid style, — were born of strenuous and heroic toil 
(and this is, indeed, one of the chief secrets of his suc- 
cess); self-sacrificing, earnest, hopeful toil; toil begun 
under Miss Lucy Clapp, school-dame at Dorchester ; 
kept up under the hard knocks of John Tileston's 
indurated hand in North Bennet Street; carried on 
beneath the eye of eccentric William Biglow ; exer- 
cised at Exeter to the delight of dignified Dr. Ben- 
jamin Abbott ; persisted in at Harvard and at Gottin- 
gen ; borne uncomplainingly in Congress ; endured 
when health and strength were failing ; agonized in 
when every power of head and heart were called to 
the salvation of the State : and was it not a si«ht 
sublime to see him, up to that moment when he says, 
" My hands and feet were as ice, and lungs on fire," 
still toiling to uphold the tattered banner, and to 
stanch the wounds of his bleeding country? 

Mr. Everett's power over language was truly mar- 
vellous. Conversant as he was with every depart- 
ment of literature and science, his thesaurus of words 
became almost inexhaustible ; and, in fluency of die- 



78 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

tion, he stood, perhaps, unrivalled. He summoned 
from the well-stored cells of his retentive memory 
the words which best conveyed his thought; and with 
electric speed they came trooping forth as willing 
servitors, the appropriate one in its appropriate place, 
to do his bidding. Never have I so keenly realized 
what Homer meant by winged words, inea me^oifux, 
as when I have heard them coming, angelic heralds 
of lofty thought, from his eloquent lips. They were, 
indeed, " apples of gold in pictures of silver." He 
was absolutely master of his mother-tongue. I do not 
mean by this, merely, that he understood the laws 
of language, could arrange his sentences in grammati- 
cal and rhetorical order, and ring out a round of 
changes on some ten or a dozen thousand common 
words : but that he held at his immediate command 
the accumulated wealth of our grand old English 
tongue ; the riches of poetry, fiction, art, science, 
philosophy, politics, religion, — Celtic, Saxon, Gothic, 
Norman, Roman ; and that from this wonderful copia 
verborum he selected, as by intuition, the very best 
word that could be chosen, and, by the same inspira- 
tion of genius, gave it the right place for strength or 
ornament in the structure of his discourse. 

His style is just as clear as crystal. You see his 
thought, however profound and erudite, as distinctly 
as the lineaments of your face in a burnished mirror. 
His words flow forth as smoothly as the "golden oil" 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 79 

out of the olive branches of the prophet's vision 
(Zech. iv.) ; bringing the subject, whether it per- 
tain to the interminable intricacies of diplomacy, the 
abstruse calculations of astronomy, the amenities of 
literature, or the charms of social life, into dis- 
tinct relief before you. By the witchery of his 
thrilling touch, he transmutes the leaden details of 
the tritest subject into shreds of sparkling gold; and 
as Milton in his incomparable poem, as Homer in 
his catalogue of ships, makes even the recital of a list 
of technical and family names * eloquent. Though 
writing upon nearly every topic within the range of 
human thought, he never descends to the puerile or 
the vulgar, but is ever elegant, dignified, classic. He 
is always, in the words of his favorite Quintilian (lib. 
x. 1), dulcis, et candidus, et fusus; and you may 
almost write at the foot of every page, what Voltaire 
wrote of John Racine, — 

" Beau, pathetique, harmonieux, sublime." 

To me, his style seems to possess the gorgeous 
fulness of Cicero, the elegant purity and golden flow 
of Fenelon, the elevation and dignity of Burke, the 
peerless lucidity of Silvio Pellico, the fascination of 
Macaulay, and the exquisite finish of our own beloved 
Irving. 

* Vide his Eulogy on Mr. Dowse, in the delivery of which he recited 
some hundred and fifty proper names memoriler. 



80 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

As an orator, — to judge him by the ancient stan- 
dard, — he stood, after the death of Mr. Webster, as 
I, opine, first in America. Quintilian's first grand 
requisite was his : he was emphatically vir bonus, 
a good man. He was good in his soul, and good in 
the frame enshrining it. His fine, gray, speaking 
eye was large, lustrous, with a remarkable fulness 
beneath the lower lid ; his mouth was finely chiselled ; 
his brow was calm, sedate, majestic: in short, Iris fea- 
tures were so entirely classic, that Dr. Kirkland used 
to say, referring to the cast in his library, that he 
resembled his own Apollo. His limbs were well- 
proportioned ; his form was erect, manly, and grace- 
ful; so that, even when seated, his repose of manner 
commanded your respect; and, when he rose to speak, 
you felt that Canova would have been proud to take 
him as a model. His voice, which he had trained 
with consummate skill, was rich and clear ; the low 
tones mellow, soft as whispering reeds; if need were, 
birdlike ; the medium, full and sweet ; the high ones, 
resonant and searching. 

His action was dramatic, admirably suited to the 
word, and sometimes carrying the conceptions of his 
hearers far above it. One of his frequent and effec- 
tive gestures was a horizontal wave of the hand ; 
and another, sending it with thrilling energy towards 
the zenith. 

But, though his personal address was admirable. 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 81 

his excellence as an orator consisted mainly in his 
masterly power of analysis, by which he seized upon 
the salient points of his subject; in those felicitous 
illustrations which he always had at his command ; 
in that graceful drapery which he threw around 
them; in that vivida vis animce which set them forth 
to the life before you ; and, above all, in those ideal 
conceptions of beauty and sublimity which raised his 
subject above itself, and sent the thought of the 
spell-bound hearer soaring after it. 

Mr. Everett was a poet, as the dirge of "Alaric," 
praised by Thomas Campbell, and " Santa Croce," — 
passages from which our President has just now so 
well recited, and which was written, he informs me, 
for Mrs. Trollope's "Italy,"— indubitably testify; and 
the inspiration of the Muse was the soul of his elo- 
quence. Others might, perhaps, be able to stir the 
emotions of an audience more profoundly; though I 
have seen him come down upon the hearts of an 
innumerable throng, rocking them as the autumnal 
winds rock the branches of the mighty forest. By 
dint of pandering to the passions, others might, per- 
haps, gain a greater temporary advantage ; but Mr. 
Everett, without compromising the high vocation of 
an orator, could inspire an audience with lofty 
thoughts more easily than any one it has been my 
privilege to hear. 



11 



82 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

" When he speaks, 
The air, a chartered libertine, is still, 
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears 
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences." 

It may be that Patrick Henry had more vehe- 
mence ; Randolph of Roanoke, more wit ; Alexander 
Hamilton, greater power of invective ; William Wirt, 
more moving pathos; John C. Calhoun, more parti- 
san skill ; Daniel Webster, more commanding weight : 
but in splendor of conception, in range of learning, 
in severity of training, in beauty of diction, in grace- 
ful elocution, in power to raise and poetize a com- 
mon topic, — in completeness, Edward Everett ex- 
celled them all. 

We naturally associate his name with that of 
Webster. They were intimate friends, of the same 
political principles and tendencies ; both conservative, 
both ardent lovers of the Union. Webster was bred 
in the country, face to face with Nature ; Everett in 
the city, face to face with man. Therefore, as might 
be anticipated, Webster has more strength, Everett 
more beauty ; Webster more originality, Everett 
more grace ; Webster more of logic, Everett more 
of rhetoric; the one more power, the other more 
splendor. But it must not be inferred from this that 
the latter is less effective; for, if Webster strike 
with mightier prowess, Everett cuts with keener 
blade: and though one excel in invention, the other 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 83 

excels in erudition ; though one excel in argument, 
the other excels in illustration ; and if one be the 
majestic oak, that withstands the shock of elemental 
warfare, the other is the graceful elm, that bends, then 
rises still to beautify the landscape. If one be the 
fiery Demosthenes, thundering against the impetuous 
Philip, the other is the accomplished Cicero, " im- 
mortalis ingenii beatissima ubertate," taking watch- 
ful care that the republic receive no detriment, and 
fairly winning the illustrious title of Pater Patrije. 
The granite rock of the mountain, the marble shaft 
of the capitol, — both were needful to the solidity and 
decoration of the rising temple of American litera- 
ture ; and, as par nobile fratrum, they will both com- 
mand the admiration of as;es. 

Mr. Everett's mind was profoundly reverent, and 
hence essentially conservative. He revered the great 
and good; he bowed in reverential awe to the names 
of the honored dead ; he held in most sincere respect 
the deeds and characters of the founders of our 
nation, and especially those of Franklin and of Wash- 
ington. He venerated aged men : nothing gave 
him greater pain than to witness the irreverence of 
what is called the " Young America " of the present 
clay. He revered the masterly productions of the 
pen, the pencil, and the chisel; he revered the grand 
and beautiful, whether he beheld it in the solemn 
ruins of the Parthenon or the Coliseum, or in that 



84 N. E. HISTOEIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

"optic glass" through which the "Tuscan artist" 
viewed the moon 

" At evening from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Valdarno to descry new lands, 
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe ; " 

whether his eye rested on the rosy-tinted peaks of 
Alpine grandeur ; whether he saw it beaming from 
the forehead of the morning, as the orient star led 
on the golden-tressed sun to pour effulgence over 
the enchanting vales below. He revered the human 
soul, but, most of all, that Unseen Power which poet- 
ized the soul in his own bright image ; and I have 
heard it said that he never allowed a day to pass, 
though on a journey and far from home, without 
rendering due homage to His sacred name. Will 
any one dare blame me for ascribing to this sus- 
tained and uniform devotion something of his success 
in life ? Has any one attained pre-eminence except 
through the Valle cruris, and a reverent humility that 
bows to the majesty of the Invisible, and trembles 
and adores? 

But though conservative, T never knew a person 
whose mind was, in the true sense, more progressive. 
He hailed with absolute delight any discovery or im- 
provement in the arts by which the labors of man 
might be alleviated and the great ends of civilization 
promoted. The invention of a new method of regis- 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 85 

tering an astronomical observation, of a new reaper 
or an impickable lock, of a new valve to simplify 
the operation of the steam-engine, of a scheme for 
rendering the contents of a library more available, 
for making the printing-press more effective, he 
never failed to herald exultingly in his lectures to 
the people ; so that, whoever would make himself 
acquainted with the wonderful discoveries of modern 
science, as well as the leading points in our civil and 
literary history, must not fail to " give his days and 
nights" to the volumes of Everett. 

But the crowning beauty of his life was his un- 
quenchable goodness. The sincere and active love 
he bore his fellow-men is that which makes his name 
a golden word upon the tongue. " Could I tell you 
how frequently he aided and encouraged the humble 
applicants who came to him for assistance," writes 
one of his most intimate friends to me, ""his kindness 
and benevolence would appear as great as his talents 
and acquirements." His large, warm heart thrilled 
at the recital of a deed of goodness, as the chords of 
Memnon's statue when struck by the beams of the 
morning. He had not a particle of envy in his soul, 
but ever loved to see his fellow-men successful, and 
to hear them praised. He appreciated excellence in 
whatever garb he found it. He was polite and kind 
even to children; so that, after leaving a school one 
day, a little child said to her teacher, "I felt like bow- 



86 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

ing all the time while that good man was present." 
He even sought with the interest of a pearl-diver for 
the gleams of genius among the people ; and when 
he found an Elihu Burritt at his anvil, a Cambridge 
leather-dresser with a literary taste, or a young 
mathematician of unwonted mental power, he cried 
" Eureka V with as much delight as Pythagoras when 
he had demonstrated the forty-seventh proposition 
of Euclid. 

Though the very busiest of men, he was never too 
busy to hear the story of the indigent student, and to 
aid him on his toilsome way. Though standing on 
one of the highest pinnacles of fame, he never felt 
himself too high to instruct the lowly. He aided Mr. 
Bancroft when a student ; he imparted knowledge to 
the Nestor of this Society when a tradesman ; he 
condescended even to me. His life is radiant with 
the light of loving deeds. He drew largely from the 
classic fountains in order to do good ; he continued 
long amid the criminations and recriminations of 
political life that he might do good ; he laid his neck 
to the yoke, his hammer to the anvil, for the sake of 
doing good ; he burned his life down to the socket in 
doing good ; he breathed his last breath in doing 
good : the royal beauty of his intellect is crowned by 
the diadem of his love. Here was the " hiding of his 
power." 

Mr. President, I love and revere, as you yourself do, 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. §7 

the name of Edward Everett. It is suspended as a 
glittering pleiad in the heaven of my earliest, fondest 
recollections. It is associated with ray schoolboy 
studies, sports, and pastimes ; it had in it a spell to 
arouse my youthful aspirations for the good, the 
beautiful, and the true ; it possessed a charm which 
won its way, as 

" Music from a golden bar," 

into the deepest recesses of my soul; it represented 
to me the great republic of letters, — genius, beauty, 
art, eloquence, urbanity, grace, and goodness ; it fired 
my young imagination, as did the name of Plato that 
of the student of Stagira, lighting the way into the 
groves of the Academy : and, when I first came to 
meet him, I felt, as Chateaubriand in his celebrated 
interview with Washington, that he had warmed my 
soul to virtue for the remainder of my days* 

Is this man dead ? Ah, no ! he lives in millions of 
grateful, loving hearts. Is Edward Everett dead? 
He lives enshrined in the innermost chambers of the 
heart of his agonizing country as one of her noblest 
defenders, her wisest counsellors, and her most elo- 
quent avant-couriers of learning and of liberty; he 
lives among the illustrious of that bright spirit-land 



* " Je m'en suis senti eehauffe le rcstc de ma vie ! II y a une virtu 
dans les regards d'un grand homme." — Voyage en Amerique par M. Le 
Vicomte Chateaubriand, p. 27 7. 



88 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

t 

from which he drew the light for his resplendent life, 
and to which that life unwaveringly aspired. He did 
not die ; the good can never die : — 

" He passed through glory's morning gate, 
And walked in Paradise." 



ADDRESS. 



By Rev. F. W. Holland, A. M., of Cambridge. 



12 



ADDRESS. 



After so lengthy, thorough, and finished a sketch 
of Mr. Everett's literary claims to remembrance, a 
few words, Mr. President, are needed to evince our 
sense of that last expression of his rich soul with 
which its earthly career so beautifully closed. My 
words must be few, because the facts are familiar; 
because the time has already passed at which our 
sessions are wont to terminate ; because it is of con- 
centrated action, rather than practical study, that I 
design to speak. 

As we have been told Edward Everett's public ca- 
reer commenced with the pulpit, so with the pulpit 
it may be said to have ended. But not now as then, 
— to a select audience, of a single denomination, 
within narrow walls, among the limitations of an un- 
written yet unchanging ritual : now he preached to 
the whole country, through all modern organs of 
appeal, on the broad platform of humanity, at the 
altar of a universal faith. More than this : in the 
Brattle-street pulpit he had set forth with rare elo- 
quence the theory of philanthropy. In Faneuil Hall, 
through the press, by his vast personal influence, he 



92 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

not only urged the practice of that highest benevo- 
lence which feeds the enemy, blesses the erring, and 
returns good for evil : he led the way in practical ap- 
plication of the noblest truth of our religion, — that 
which wreathed the parable of the Good Samaritan 
with immortality, and crowned the name of Jesus 
with glory in the highest. 

Among the many whom this terrible war has un- 
veiled to the country as Christianity was illuminated 
by the flames which consumed its martyrs, no more 
splendid example can be found than that of him 
whom we all mourn yet rejoice over to-clay. Had it 
not been for the dread emergency which dragged 
him forth from well-earned retirement, which sum- 
moned him to a broader philanthropic effort than 
had yet been dreamed of, Mr. Everett would have 
been chiefly remembered, as he has already been 
eulogized here and elsewhere, as the admirable essay- 
ist, the master-critic, the universal student, the pure 
statesman, the accomplished diplomatist, the consum- 
mate orator; that completed character, in fact, to 
which American institutions are thought hostile, and 
the American public unfriendly. Now he has cast 
off his reserve as a worn-out cloak, has emancipated 
himself from the chilling atmosphere which isolated 
him from the masses, and become our noblest embodi- 
ment of patriotic philanthropy. Now he is known, 
loved, blessed, throughout the land, as one of the 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 93 

widest benefactors we have ever known ; as not only 
glad to do his part in succoring the distressed, but 
rarely gifted in persuading others to do theirs ; in 
fact, an originator of a method of philanthropic ap- 
peal which none who survive can hope to prosecute 
with such amazing success. 

I do not forget, that, before the gun fired at Fort 
Sumter gave an electric thrill to all loyal hearts, Mr. 
Everett had labored with a result no other could have 
hoped, with rarely adapted powers, with exquisite 
rhetoric, fascinating voice, admirable gesture, amazing 
memory, to secure Mount Vernon as the national 
memorial of Washington. Remeinberina; that he was 
heavily laden with years, that his health was none of 
the best, that his tastes were for the life of a retired 
man of letters, that he did not crave this addition to 
his well-established fame, that his classical refinement 
which impeded his success in Congress would inter- 
fere much more with this popular appeal, we cannot 
admire enough his whole-souled devotion to this doubly- 
generous cause, and his sacrifice of thne, strength, stu- 
dious habits, and natural reserve, to arouse the entire 
land in an expression of the broadest patriotism. 
Here certainly it need not be told how he endured 
the winter's cold and summer's heat ; braced himself 
against fatigue ; cast off the feeling of weariness ; vis- 
ited the remotest cities as well as those near at hand ; 
encouraged every kind of co-operation ; repeated the 



94 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

same admirable appeal (without recurring to his 
notes for many months) wherever it was likely to 
avail, North and South, East and West ; furnishing 
-weekly contributions to a New-York journal, through 
an entire year, for the same purpose ; a task which 
many thought beneath a man who had occupied all 
but the most exalted place in the gift of the people, — 
the Presidency of Harvard College, the Governorship 
of this State, the ministry at the court of St. James, 
the highest office under that which is supreme and 
sovereign among us. 

He was not thus unwearied in labor, thus enter- 
prising in effort, thus concentrated in purpose, simply 
that Washington might be understood by this gener- 
ation ; that his ashes might rest forever undisturbed ; 
that a nation's reverence might hallow this only na- 
tional shrine. It was that he might bind the whole 
people together in this bond of spiritual union ; that 
sectional interests might be forgotten in this common 
sympathy ; that North and South might clasp hands 
together over this legacy of a soul which never gave 
up to party what was meant for mankind ; that the 
evil day might be put far from us when we should 
think more of local differences than of our glorious 
heritage as a united nation. Once, in a New- York 
riot, the sudden uplifting of a portrait of Washington 
abashed the mob, and caused better feelings to pre- 
vail a while in those who were fast forgetting their 



IN MEMORY OF EDWARD EVERETT. 95 

humanity. So this eloquent plea for Mount Vernon 
inspired us for a season with tender gratitude for the 
self-devotion of him whose claims for perpetual rev- 
erence he so perfectly justified ; with religious rever- 
ence for our hero-age ; Avith a richer consciousness of 
our privileges as a people ; with a fervent hope, that 
the national independence, bought at such sacrifice, 
might be preserved unchanged through political 
strife, party division, and sectional animosity. No 
person who came under the influence of this fervent 
address, none who felt the abiding power of his stir- 
ring thought, can imagine that he failed in rekindling 
the fire of patriotism on a thousand, thousand altars ; 
that he failed in quickening the young by admira- 
tion of their country's better day ; that he failed in 
preparing many noble hearts to offer themselves in 
generous sacrifice for its preservation and perpetuity. 
His effort for East Tennessee was made so entire- 
ly under our own eyes, its steady progress was so 
constantly recorded in our own daily journals, its 
manly appeals came so fresh from his ever-busy pen, 
we need not state that over a hundred thousand dol- 
lars were cheerfully contributed; that all classes 
united heartily in the prompt relief of an unknown 
amount of wretchedness inevitable to a territory over 
which rebel and Union armies, and, worst of all, gue- 
rilla hordes, had inarched and remarched, had strug- 
gled and bled. But for his fervent voice and pen, no 



96 N. E. HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

one believes that the greater part of this great sum 
could have been raised, where so many applications 
for relief nearer home are being constantly met, so 
many noble charities vigorously sustained, such con- 
tinued drains made upon willing hands and generous 
hearts. And yet all this has proved but a part of 
our debt to suffering humanity. His eye saw deeper 
than ours ; saw an extremity of want which hardly 
a million of money could remove ; saw an utterness 
of exhaustion which charity would strive in vain to 
supply, and which now supplicates our sympathy 
again. 

Probably no effort ever made was rewarded with 
such immediate gratitude. A whole State lifted its 
voice in blessing. Slave-emancipation having oblit- 
erated the dividing-line, the relief of one part of that 
grand State comes to the relief of the whole ; so that 
his name will ever be echoed in praise along those 
broad streams, and repeated enthusiastically from 
those lofty mountain-ranges. The deliverer of thou- 
sands from starvation, the redeemer of whole families 
from despair, the full hand of effective sympathy 
stretched from afar, — it was indeed the crowning: 
achievement of patriotic philanthropy. No man liv- 
ing has surpassed it. Never again may an equal 
necessity show how much we have lost in losing him, 
who (as was said of Cicero), swaying the common- 
wealth, not by the splendor of office nor the terror of 



IN MEMORY OP EDWARD EVERETT. 97 

command, but by the influence of character and the 
charm of genius, could thus answer deep with "deep. 
Well has he been called "chancellor of the exche- 
quer for the pity of our time." 

There is not time to allude to a thousand nameless 
services of love to old and young, to strangers and 
friends, to rich and poor, to maimed soldier and dis- 
abled sailor, to exultant freeclman and cowering refu- 
gee. But the last act of his life was its fitting close. 
The representative of Savannah appeared among us 
to make known its alarming destitution. Southern 
pride humbled itself so far as to betray the poverty 
it had visited upon its own head. Absorbed in a per- 
plexing lawsuit, exhausted by confinement in court, 
chilled almost to ice, Mr. Everett warmed up to the 
occasion, threw his heart into his words, carried the 
sympathy of Faneuil Hall with him, and secured a far 
greater relief than any had ventured to hope. His 
countenance wore an unusual lustre while he spoke : 
though the death-shadow lay upon him, his face 
seemed illuminated from the brightness within the 
veil; and, as soon as he felt that this last victory 
over sectional selfishness was won, he fell asleep with- 
out a pang, prompting us to say that — 

" Nothing in his life 
Became him like the leaving it : he died 
As one that had been studied in his death 
To throw away the dearest thing he owed 
As 'twere a careless trifle." 



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